welcome to the biggest republic of russia Yakutia
or the Sakha republic it's the coldest inhabited place of the earth with average temperature
in winter minus 40 celsius but people don't only survive here as many of you could think they
truly enjoy their unique lifestyle yacht culture and food let's see what people eat in the coldest
city of the earth to get enough calories and get warm and what delicacies they have my local
friend maria is joining me for breakfast yeah hi everyone i'm maria and i also
have a youtube channel live in yakutia if you want to know more how about how we live
in yakutia welcome to my channel and now me and elina we are going to try some traditional yakut
cuisine let's go let's go it's too cold outside so what do yakud people usually eat for breakfast
um so you know all our food is normally very nutritious so here it's okay to eat soup for
breakfast for example no soup for breakfast yes yes yes breakfast for me is usually like
porridge eggs yeah we also eat eggs or only coffee yeah we also eat eggs or yogurt or something
like that but it's possible to eat something you know like potatoes meat for example what do you
usually eat for breakfast meat personally well i like to eat bread with tea okay but some people
eat soup yeah yeah especially those who spend a lot of time outside who work outside for example
and yakut food is mostly about meat right because there are no vegetables or fruits growing in
yakutia yeah like so today we are going to try traditional cuisine and our traditional
cuisine is mostly about meat dairy products because yakuti is so cold and we don't have
fruits that that grow here naturally and yeah so basically it's like that while maria and
i are waiting for our soup and meat for breakfast let me take you to the outside meenan fish market
of yakutsk and let's talk to the locals as well they stay outdoors working here every day
there is no need to have a refrigerator here in yakutia there is also a lot
of berries growing bruising he is an athlete and he even has a calendar chat hey foreign look this is how milk is salt here frozen in pieces and then you melt it the most popular meat here is jeri
betena which is baby horse meat and yakut people love to eat it raw and it's
even more popular here than chicken meat a distinctive feature of the yakut cuisine is
the fullest possible use of all components of the original product heads guts tails everything
can be used to prepare a dish even blood is used here to make sausage-like delicacies obviously
such economical attitude towards products is the result of people's experience of
survival in harsh arctic conditions solidarity foreign that's how products are sold when
outdoors is colder than in the fridge well now let's see what can be cooked out
of this product well i see a lot of raw meat so could you explain to the audience why
it's popular to eat the raw meat in yakutia it's actually our traditional
food raw horse meat only horse i think and raw fish right and raw
fish yeah raw fish and raw horse meat well it's our tradition like traditional food
it came from our ancestors but the thing is that horses they are like wild animals
they spend a lot of time outside and like they go to the field they find
grass under the snow and they eat snow instead of water and they live by their their
selves yes and also yogurt people only eat like young horses right yeah it's like only baby horses
baby horse yeah like six or seven months why so the the reason is that horses give birth in march
and in october in the beginning of winter the horse breeders they know exactly which fall which
baby horse will not survive during the winter because because they have wild lifestyle they die
a lot and like because of the cold weather because of the different things that they
find in nature because of the wolves and even though like some of them are slaughtered
still not all horses survive during winter raw horse meat in yakuti i believe it's very hard
to be a vegetarian because you really need lots of calories lots of energy when you're
outside at 40 50 60 degrees celsius when it's cold all the time you just need this energy to
keep you warm right yeah and the raw meat is more nutritious allows you to get
the energy faster right rather than the boiled or cooked meat yeah it's more nutritious
definitely has more protein well let's try okay how how how do you eat the raw meat i don't know
so you take it dip it in the salt with pepper it's good actually i thought it
would be awful because it's raw meat and we always eat it frozen like not melted it's surprisingly good especially with this spices and the salt so now next dish
this is frozen raw liver horse liver but how often do you eat it is it
like a delicacy or you can eat it several times a week like on the usual day
it's actually delicacy like not that much um we eat it and what about the first one that
we tried is it also a delicacy not really because there are a lot of meat and the liver
is not that much and liver we normally eat on special occasions and meat we can eat
like often oh this doesn't look good for me yeah it's very exotic do you like it
by the way the taste yeah i like it it's like jelly gillette you
know or something jelly jelly i don't know it might be not very bad but the
thought that it's a raw liver no no and it's so like slippery
look at this because it's yeah it's melting yeah another
dish of frozen fish is cheer so many dishes of frozen raw meat yeah
because it's so cold outside and you bring the meat or fish from there but do you make
it at home as well or only eat in restaurants no this is like yeah on a daily basis yeah yeah
so can people eat raw meat every day yeah they can if they want but what kind of meat do
you eat more often raw or cooked cooked cooked yeah raw meat is like appetizer it's
not the main dish do i also dip it here yeah this is so good yeah it's like better than sushi you know
yeah it's very good fish the taste is really good i like it much more than meat and definitely
than the liver yeah so um this is actually um i think it's called white fish in english but
i can be wrong this fish lives in the lakes of the north of yakutia it lives in a really cold
uh lakes and therefore it has a lot of fat so this is like a mega three pure omega three
and it's it's it's uh this fish is very very pure like it it comes from really ecologically
pure places which are really far from civilization i feel like i'm not gonna love the next
dish it's boiled guts yeah of course looks awful why but do you like it i mean
it looks it looks good but it smells maybe it doesn't look good this is this is harta
it's a boiled horse intestines so because um yakutia like this is our traditional food and
as i said we eat a lot of meat and we eat like almost everything from the that that is inside
of the animal even the brain and the tails right yeah like yeah tails if you if you take off the
fur then it can be boiled and have you eaten the brains yeah the brains taste
like eggs eggs okay let's go i'm obliged to do this as a host of this channel have you eaten do you like
it it's actually really good the sauce is quite spicy but this one is good you should chew it i'm chewing it's actually really good
it's like a lot of fat i don't know the gut of the horse here we go oh it doesn't smell good it doesn't
smell good but tastes better just put it all in your mouth don't
take a little piece chew too fast no i can't it's okay it may it may be too
exotic for you i'm just making myself chew it oh no it doesn't taste good
at all for me okay that's fine and you like the taste really yeah it's good
it's very good and we have the iconic dish here the blood sausage it's made of a blood
of a horse right our young horse again and it looks white not red because it's made of
plasma right so can you explain how it's made so um this is like plasma when you leave the blood
for like a night the red part goes to the bottom and the transparent one goes to the top and
we take the top one and mix it with milk and fulfill the ingesting and the guts yeah
and then we would then we boil it and it's a blood sausage it's called han but can you buy
this kind of sausages in the supermarket not in supermarket but in the local fish market you
can find it and it's very expensive actually it's so it's like the top delicacy one of
yeah because it's hard to make it's not it's kind of rare and yeah we like it it's
very nutritious and it's very traditional a sausage made of blood i never thought
that this will happen in my life it's weird it's like if i didn't know what it
was made of i would think that it's an omelette it tastes like omelette it's and
the texture is like an omelette actually it's hard to believe that
it's made of blood and all this stuff for me it's like omelette it's weird they like it actually yeah i think that
i like it so you also make it at home yeah of course can you do it for yourself do
you know how to make it i know how to make it yeah because my parents are farmers and we do
it like every year uh have you tried the plasma the blood to drink it yeah yeah but like just
a little okay and how do you like the taste yeah it's fine why do people drink it because
it's very nutritious and good for health after after drinking it you actually feel better
you feel different maria also ordered a soup what soup is this this soup is called
ismina which basically means soup from stomach this is actually soup from the intestines from the
guts and yeah here is just you know see we call it suprom hedgehogs because because
they look like hedgehogs look and here is in uh inside it's a potato the
intestines a little bit of onion and water with flour and this is very traditional it's like
we can have it like every day not every day but it's something very often this is like a home
food yeah can you prepare this soup yourself yes of course do you usually make it yeah i make
it like maybe once a week or once in two weeks depending on what is on our menu finally there is
not meat not raw meat not guts but a porridge and maria told me that it's flour butter
and salt right and cream and cream porridge made of flour interesting and uh
how often do you usually eat it this is not often it reminds me a lot semolina with the texture and
even taste it's like semolina it's really good and when do you usually eat it this is actually um
do you eat it with bread yeah like for breakfast or um normally we eat it not that often but you
can have it for breakfast for example so this salamat this porridge is actually used for
rituals for example when someone gets married or someone buys a new home we make a special
ritual which is called algus it's actually asking for blessings from gods and we feed
the fire with salamat you put it in the fire yeah we feed the fire yakutian desert
karcher it's whipped cream right and usually people mix it with different
gem for example this one is with blackberry blue blueberry yeah okay blueberry and this one is
the same thing whipped cream but it's in a frozen uh way and how do you call it tonka tonko
or martishke monkeys i don't know why why i don't know why this is called monkeys and
sometimes people can eat it with this flat bread it's very good when do you usually eat it
it's actually often eaten for breakfast yeah especially in summer when cows have a lot of milk
because they eat grass fresh grass it's very good and martinske martescape are eaten normally
in winter only because we freeze them outside and oh not in the refrigerator no because
in re not in the freezer because in freezer freezer has like can have some smell you know
it it absorbs it and when you leave it outside it it's different it freezes different i've
never had such a huge nutritious breakfast i am so full but do you eat less for lunch
and dinner like is breakfast the biggest meal of the day um i wouldn't say so this is
not and breakfast and lunch and dinner no i mean meat and soup this was very nutritious that
like even for us we've tried kind of everything you know like the most you know exotic things
from our cuisine i feel like i ate for my whole travels in yokota for weeks and weeks
ahead see this this evening okay after you will be outside yeah thank you so much
maria for introducing me to jakku food with this vlog i finished this series of my videos from
the far north of russia which i hope you enjoyed you know there are more than 190 nationalities
in our country but anywhere i travel i see how similar we all are and from people from the
north i learned that it's not the weather that makes the place warm but its people and i wish
everyone to meet such people personally i don't know where my life will take me next and i will
continue to travel and show you the life of others you