Yak Meat Soup 牦牛肉汤
Yak Meat Soup is featured among the local specialties of Tibet (Xizang).
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Yak Meat Soup (牦牛肉汤) is a broth simmered from yak meat that forms the base of local dishes in Shannan (山南), Tibet. In Qusum County (曲松县) it is the soup of Xiajiang diced meat (下江丁肉), a local speciality on the Shannan municipal intangible heritage list, and on guthuk night before the Tibetan New Year it goes into the noodle dish guthuk (古突).
How it is made
The Tibet Daily describes the Xiajiang version in detail. Every ingredient is local: the soup is simmered from local yak meat and seasoned only with Tibetan spring onion, the leaves of the Sichuan pepper plant from Nang County (朗县) and a locally produced seasoning called xiaguo tangjie (夏果汤结), ground to a powder; nothing else is added. A little tsampa (糌粑), roasted barley flour, goes into the pot while the soup simmers, which the paper says makes the beef chewier and gives the broth a better texture.
Elsewhere in Tibet, a Lhasa resident interviewed by China Tibet News says that chunks of yak meat boiled with white radish or potatoes are a dish every household takes on linka (过林卡) picnic outings.
Where it comes from
Diced yak meat of the Xiajiang kind has been made for about a hundred years, and Xiajiang diced meat was added to the Shannan municipal intangible heritage list in 2020. The first diced-meat restaurant in Xiajiang village (下江村) opened in 1989, and the report counts ten such restaurants in Xiajiang township in 2023.
How it is eaten
In Qusum the soup and meat are served with handmade steamed buns, balls of tsampa and Tibetan chilli oil. On guthuk night, the 29th day of the twelfth Tibetan month, Tibetan families eat guthuk, a noodle dish made by adding beef, radish, dried cheese curds (奶渣) and other ingredients to yak meat soup, to welcome the Tibetan New Year. Xinhua photographed guesthouses in Zhaxi Choideng (扎西曲登) community in Nedong District (乃东区) serving it to visitors on guthuk night in 2025.
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.