3 traditional Bhutanese dishes everyone must try!

Beef-filled momos served with soup

Momos are filled dumplings, usually steamed, that can be eaten as a snack or as a meal. They are simply delicious!

The most traditional type of momo is filled with minced beef. These days, however, you can enjoy a variety of dumpling fillings such as vegetables or cheese.

Momos are often served with a little bowl of chilli dipping sauce. At other times they can come with a bowl of soup. Some restaurants even fry the dumplings for extra crunch and taste.

Pan-fried chicken momos

And then there are hoentay, which are vegetarian buckwheat dumplings that originated in the Haa Valley. Hoentay are healthier than regular momos as they usually contain turnip leaves, spinach and cheese. They're ideal for anyone with a gluten intolerance who still wants to indulge in this local favourite.

Vegan momos with dipping sauce

There are many different kinds of datshi in Bhutan, but all consist of cooked vegetables that are topped with melted cheese or (as is more often the case) are smothered in cheese sauce.

Ema datshi made with yellow chillies

Ema datshi, for instance, is a tasty dish of simmered hot chilli peppers topped with melted cheese or immersed in a cheesy sauce. The name actually says it all, as ema means chilli peppers and datshi (also spelled dhatse) means cheese.

A bowl of ema datshi

Ema datshi is highly versatile, from the types of cheeses and chilli peppers that are used to the additional ingredients that you can add to it. So you might want to try the dish more than once to find the ema datshi that most floats your boats.

Another particularly tasty datshi dish that we recommend you try while visiting the country is shamu dhatse.

A bowl of shamu dhatse

This flavourful dish is a cheesy and buttery stew that stars Himalayan mushrooms. It's generally not as spicy as ema dhatse, but it still packs a mouth punch from the inclusion of a few chillies.

Finally, for those of you who are keen on the idea of a cheesy stew but don't want all the chilli, then kewa datshi is for you. A much milder dish, this stew focuses on sliced potatoes that have been sautéed in plenty of butter and then topped with a yummy cheese sauce.

Bhutan has many incredibly tasty meat-based dishes, from those that use local yak meat to those that rely on imported fish. One of the tastiest traditional meat-based dishes is phaksha paa, which is pork ribs cooked with daikons (a type of winter radish), ginger and fresh or dried chilli peppers.

A phaksha paa stew

By now you've likely picked up that the Bhutanese like chillies ... a lot! Since phaksha paa uses another of their favourite foods (pork), it's easy to see why this particular dish is so popular among locals!

Paksha paa can be served many ways, from being served on a bed of red rice with a side of vegetables to being integrated into a flavoursome stew. Some of the vegetables most often used to create phasha paa are potatoes, spinach and cabbage.

For those of you who don't like to eat pork, there's nosha paa, which is a similarly flavoured dish that uses beef instead of pork.

We encourage everyone exploring Bhutan to try at least one variation of each of the above traditional dishes to help you enjoy a more authentic cultural experience while staying in this truly one-of-a-kind mountain nation.