Nyingchi Matsutake Chicken Stew 林芝松茸炖鸡
Nyingchi Matsutake Chicken Stew is featured among the local specialties of Tibet (Xizang).
Nyingchi Matsutake Chicken Stew (林芝松茸炖鸡) is chicken simmered with matsutake mushrooms (松茸) in Nyingchi (林芝), Tibet. The Nyingchi tourism development bureau names matsutake stewed with chicken, together with matsutake cooked in hotpot or on the grill, as the most common ways the mushroom is prepared. In the town of Lulang (鲁朗), the dish overlaps with Lulang stone-pot chicken (鲁朗石锅鸡), where the stew is made in a carved stone pot.
How it is made
The Nyingchi tourism bureau describes the Lulang version as free-range Tibetan chicken raised on the plateau, slow-simmered with ginseng, matsutake, gastrodia (天麻) and palmate orchid root (手掌参). The pot is cut from a talc stone known as soapstone (皂石), which the bureau says comes mainly from Medog County (墨脱县); a CNR travel feature adds that each pot is carved from a single piece of Medog soapstone.
A 2025 Xinhua report from Lulang, carried by People's Daily Online, describes the stone-pot chicken restaurant that guesthouse owner Tenzin (旦增) runs in a corner of his courtyard: Tibetan free-range chicken is stewed with fresh matsutake of the season in a stone pot, and the broth slowly soaks into the ingredients as it bubbles.
Flavour and texture
The same report describes the broth as golden and clear, warm and rich in the mouth, with chicken that is savoury, soft and tender. The tourism bureau calls matsutake the "king of fungi" (菌中之王) and describes matsutake dishes as fresh-tasting, easy to digest and strongly aromatic.
Where it comes from
The mushrooms are gathered locally. Tenzin told Xinhua reporters that he goes up the mountain every day in the season to pick matsutake, sometimes collecting five jin (about 2.5 kg) in a day, and that guests staying at his house often join him; the report counts these mushroom-picking walks among the activities visitors seek out in Lulang. CNR notes that Nyingchi matsutake can be stewed, braised, stir-fried or boiled, and that the most traditional local way is to roast them slowly on a Kongpo (工布) Tibetan stove with a little butter.
Sources & reading
Written from the linked sources and checked sentence by sentence against quoted extracts by a separate reviewer on 2026-09-25. Recipes and servings vary between kitchens.