Like all the peoples of the northern region, the Yukaghirs mainly ate meat and fish. In addition, they ate wild berries, edible herbs and, unlike the Sakha people, ate some types of mushrooms. Meat and fish were boiled, fried on a barn, baked, dried, smoked and frozen.

In Kolyma and Indigirka rivers, such delicious fish as sturgeon, sterlet, omul (Arctic cisco), wild boar, muksun, white fish, peled and herring were found in abundance. One could make the most excellent stroganina made of white fish. Sterlet caviar was especially appreciated, and its meat was preferred to sturgeon meat. Chir (broad whitefish), nelma (Siberian white salmon), omul and other "white" fish were usually eaten in their natural form – as stroganina, yukola. Yukaghirs ate "black" lake fish boiled, fried or baked. Deer and elk meat was cooked, but sometimes they could make from these kind of meat a stroganina – sliced meat. Wild fowl was consumed only boiled.

For the long winter, yukola was prepared from fish. In the summer, women gathered berries and roots of edible herbs, which they dried. Mushrooms were also dried and used as a seasoning for soups. Yukaghirs especially stocked up with dried crushed roots called pulhi. This valuable product has saved people from hunger many times. Flour was pounded from peeled, dried roots in a wooden mortar. Not only Yukaghirs, but also Russian long-term residents baked a kavardak from it. Pulhi was added to tea and fish pies. Small fish was baked near the fire on willow stakes. Fish offal and caviar were fried. The bellies of fatty fish, as well as the liver of burbot were eaten raw. Scones were baked from caviar and crushed fish.

Yukaghir cuisine has not been studied. There is an urgent need to collect cooking recipes from older people. Otherwise, we will not restore or lose much of the culture of this people.

Пища юкагиров

Teliedalgza Yukola

Prepared from large fish of good quality. Clean fresh fish from scales, gut. Separate the meat from the ridge and cut off the backbone to the tail. Cut the fillet into 4 plates without touching the skin, make cuts on the inside in the form of a cage or herringbone. Dry on a hanger first in a sunny place. When dry, but not hard, remove from the hanger and hang over the hearth in the yaranga. Here the yukola is brought to full smoking.

Egale

After slaughter, a large piece of meat with lard is cut out of the fresh carcass of the deer. The meat is cut into flat oblong layers, evenly distributing the fat. Layers from one end are strung on tendon threads and hung on a blown sunny place to dry. The dried meat is stored in bags and consumed in the winter.

Kulibakha

Fresh fish is cleaned of scales, the entrails are removed, then freed from the bones. The pulp is pounded and mixed with peeled and crushed blueberries, and fish oil is added here. Serve as a separate meal.

Ehalang – meat roe-corns

In summer and autumn, reindeer meat was prepared for the winter. Pieces of venison were cut into oblong layers, strung on tendon threads and hung in a blown sunny place. Sufficiently dried meat was finely crushed, then they were poured into a bag. The eggs were stored in a yaranga, in a cool dry place. Before eating, minced meat was mixed with finely chopped pieces of reindeer intestinal fat and fried. If there was no deer oil, it was replaced with fish oil. Served as an independent dish.

Chumudodye - smoked meat

The broad vertebral tendon is cut lengthwise into pieces; the meat is carefully separated from the tendon, then cut into flat layers and dried in the sun. The meat that has not yet hardened is kept on the smoke of a hearth in a yaranga. The crushed deer bones are boiled in a cauldron for a long time, periodically remove the floating fat, and cool. The smoked meat is cut into small pieces and served along with the cooled fat. Such meat can be boiled in water. Salt and spices are added during cooking.

Porsa

The fish was dried in the air, but so that it did not dry out. Then they were freed from the bones, the meat was cut into small pieces and fried in fish oil. After that, they were placed in a bag or barrel. Such a product was convenient for a hike, so the hunters took it with them on a long trip.

Anil carile

The cleaned fish is boiled until tender. The broth is poured in, and the fish is dried in the sun, spread out on a special floor. After drying, it is pounded into the finest mass or flour. Fish meal is stored in burbot skin bags. Consumed in winter. To do this, boil it in water, add deer blood, mix and bring to readiness. Salt to taste.

Fish giblets dish

The cleaned, washed giblets of large fish are boiled, the broth is drained. The giblets are mixed with rose hips and poured with fish oil. This mixture is filled with birch bark and frozen. They eat in winter.

Fish belly dish

Peeled fish, usually omul, is cut, the abdomens are cut out, and a separate dish is prepared from it. Having peeled them well, they are fried in a pan in fat, then dried on a tray and pounded. Mix with berries, crushed caviar and fish oil. It is very nutritious and delicious.

Yukagir-style flatbread

Fresh fish is cleaned of scales and fins, the head and tail are cut off, gutted, washed in cold water and boiled. After that, carefully freed from the bones, cut into very small pieces. Fresh caviar is cleaned of films, pounded, combined with pieces of fish, salt to taste, mixed well. Add flour, knead the tough dough and roll out a round tortilla, place in a greased frying pan and bake. Before use, the flat cake is cut or broken into slices, served with melted deer fat or butter.

Caviar drink

Fresh boletus caviar is thoroughly pounded to a liquid state, salt is added, mixed, then cooled. Poured into cups and served as a soft drink. This very healthy and tasty dish has been prepared since ancient times.^[1]

The main food was meat and fish. Reindeer meat was eaten raw and boiled, in winter - sliced, in spring and summer they smoked over a fire and dried in the sun long thin layers of meat. Dried meat (ekhaleng), strung on vein threads, was stored in bags in barns and boiled in winter. Fat was digested from the tubular bones. Soup (khash) was prepared from whipped fresh reindeer blood.

They also ate game: taiga - meat of hares and partridges, tundra in autumn and summer – meat of ducks and geese. Goose and swan stomachs were eaten raw. The fish was boiled, dried, fermented in pits, stored in a layer of permafrost, made stroganina (chakhaa), yukola (uikele), pounded into powder-porsa (barga). The bellies, burbot liver were consumed raw, offal and caviar were fried. Cakes were baked from caviar with fish. In the summer they cooked fish by wrapping it in willow leaves for a day. Pounded boiled fish with blueberries and fat (kulibakha), fish meal cooked with reindeer blood or pine sapwood (anil carilé) were considered a delicacy.

Yukaghirs drank tea, brewed rose hips and chaga. Berries and fish were stored in birch bark tues (ochcho). The baskets were woven from willow. The dishes were wooden and birch bark vessels of quadrangular and round shapes. To store porsa, dried fish and meat, they sewed rovduzh or woven bags, for women's handicrafts - bags from the paws of birds or rovduga.

A workshop on the preparation of stroganina is conducted by L.N. Demina

• Photographs by L.N. Zhukova

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Yukaghir gastronomy

Having slaughtered a reindeer, the tundra Yukaghirs immediately collected its blood from the heart and vessels of the abdominal region, undigested lichen was removed from the stomach, and collected blood was poured into it with a ladle and frozen for future use. The Yukaghirs boiled and whipped fresh deer blood to form a thick soup called khasha. Cooking blood, as well as other food, was not practiced by the Yukaghirs until the arrival of Russians, since they did not have metal or earthenware. In their birch bark or wooden vessels, they could, at best, boil water by dropping hot stones into it.

The melted bone marrow of the Yukaghir reindeer was mixed with the brain, reheated again and obtained "brain fat", which was flavored with dry dried meat in winter. Of the game, the Upper Kolyma Yukaghirs most often ate hares and partridges. In spring, during the flood, hare meat was sometimes their only food. In summer and autumn, the tundra Yukaghirs usually ate geese and ducks. The tubular bones of birds, filled with brains, were considered a delicacy and, in the words of A. Argentov, were the “color of Yukaghir gastronomy”.

Of the game, the Upper Kolyma Yukaghirs consumed hares and partridges most often. In spring, during the flood, hare meat was sometimes their only food. In summer and autumn, the tundra Yukaghirs usually ate geese and ducks. The tubular bones of birds, filled with brains, were considered a delicacy and, in the words of A. Argentov, were the “color of Yukaghir gastronomy”.

Omul and chir, which, as Argentov wrote, "perfectly white and deliciously tasty caviar", were among the "best native fish." But muksun was one of the best. Argentov also called the white fish a fish of "high dignity", in Nizhnekolymsk "nezna-khu”; it made "the most excellent stroganina." Pelyad was also famous as “excellent tasty fish”. In sterlet, which the Yukaghirs caught in winter with hair nets, caviar was especially valued, and its meat was preferred to sturgeon meat.

We did not say anything about the herring, and yet it deserves special attention. In different regions of Eastern Siberia, it is called differently: kondevka, vendace, herring ... Until now, it is the decoration of the festive table on the Yenisei, Lena, and Kolyma. This little fatty fish is delicious and abundant. “There are about 2,000 parishioners in the Nizhnekolymsk parish,” wrote Argentov, “and all these people, with a few exceptions, are fed and, one might say, live on herring.” Sled dogs were also alive with herring, the number of which was one and a half times the number of parishioners. That is why the locals said about the herring: "This is our manna ..."

Fish was consumed in different forms: it was boiled, fried, baked, fermented, dried, smoked and frozen. According to Argentov, the people of Kolyma even cooked "bread, pies, pancakes" from fish. Among the Yukaghir fish dishes, he calls: “belly, cast, sliced, roe, roe, boiling, drums, turner, borchu, body, body, mess, pounding, humps and feathers, intestine, baked tail, navels, dumplings, boiling water , yukolnitsa, yukola, khakhty, khachira, bone. " Individual dishes can be judged by these names (tolkusha, dumplings), but some are just a mystery. What is, for example, a kavardak?

В списке блюд мы находим несколько явно тунгусских: «тела» (правильно «тала») — сырая рыба; «тельное» — (видимо, то же самое); «юколы» и «юкольнипа» (от эвенкийского «няк») — «вяленая рыба».
«Белую» рыбу (нельму, чир, омуль и др.) юкагиры обыкновенно ели в сыром виде, без каких бы то ни было приправ. Но «черную», озерную (щуку, окуня, налима и т. п.), варили, по-видимому, из-за ее зараженности гельминтами.

To make the yukola, the Yukaghirs cut the skin from the largest and fattest fish with a layer of meat about two centimeters thick. The pieces were hung to air dry or in a smokehouse. The ridge with meat residues was dried separately. Without compromising the quality, yukola can be stored for a year. The product of longer storage was barcha, or porsa. To obtain the barch, the partially air-dried fish was freed from the bones, cut into small pieces and boiled with fish oil. The resulting product was placed in barrels or bags. According to G.L. Maydel, barcha (he used porsa) was a "relatively convenient form of canned food"; she was willingly taken on a journey.

Until the end of the last century, salting of fish was practically unknown to the population of the North-East, not excluding the Russian old-timers. Pointing out that dried fish often turned out to be of poor quality due to damp weather, Maydel sharply censured “incredibly lazy and careless people” who refused to salt the fish. The point here, however, was not laziness, but a lack of habit to salt. Moreover, it is difficult to keep salted fish for more than a year.

Perhaps the only way to preserve the nutritional properties of fish for a longer period is to freeze it. Maydel personally tasted nelma, which lay frozen in the cellar for three years, and neither he nor his companions could distinguish it from the freshly caught by taste. It was about fresh frozen fish stored in an ice casing. Such a shell is formed if a fish caught in winter is dipped twice in water and immediately frozen in the air. The Yukaghirs did not know this way of keeping fish. In addition, the main fishing took place in autumn, during its spawning run, when it was impossible to freeze the fish.

Рыбу, пойманную летом, юкагиры, как и русские старожилы, вялили, а осеннюю — в большинстве случаев сохраняли в ямах, вырытых в вечной мерзлоте,— до наступления зимних холодов она успевала «прокиснуть».
В одной деловой записке, обнаруженной мною в архиве Аллаиховского райисполкома, некий работник, побывавший в 1920-х годах в низовьях Индигирки, писал, что местными жителями «используется, как правило, тухлая, испорченная рыбопродукция», так как рыба ими «квасится». Автор записки считал, что это вредно отражается на здоровье людей, и предлагал провести «соответствующие мероприятия» — какие, он, правда, не указал.

For the sake of objectivity, it should be noted that the centuries-old consumption of "pickled" fish has not revealed any negative consequences for human health. And as you know, there is no dispute about tastes. A bear, for example, also prefers that the fish caught by him "sour" a little.

Women and children were engaged in harvesting plant products from the Yukaghirs. They usually collected the roots of thyme and other edible plants, which they ate raw, added to the stew, in pies with fish and meat, and also served separately "instead of dessert, before tea." Thyme was used not only for food, but also instead of tobacco. Pancakes - "drums" were baked from fresh sedge roots, washed in warm water and crushed together with fresh herring caviar.

Съедобные коренья — пельхи — юкагиры и русские старожилы нередко заимствовали из запасов полевых мышей. «Женщины в октябре месяце ходят по лесам, смотрят, где много мышиных нор: тут рубят землю и находят коренья кучами в так называемых мышиных амбарах»,— писал А. Е. Дьячков.
Ф. П. Врангель отмечал, что «женщины имеют особенный дар отыскивать такие убежища и уносить у бедных животных плоды предусмотрительной их заботливости» Случалось, что благодаря вовремя найденным запасам кореньев юкагиры спасали себя от голодной смерти.

Pelkhi

Пельхи – весьма ценный продукт. В отчете Якутской экспедиции Академии наук СССР (1928) сообщается, что, высушенные, очищенные, истолченные в деревянной ступе и просеянные сквозь сито, они «дают сахаристую муку, годную к печению белого хлеба». Как и тунгусы, юкагиры не ели грибов. Вместе с тем анадырские юкагиры переняли у чукчей и коряков способ употребления мухоморов в качестве возбуждающего средства. Дьячков так описывает состояние человека, опьяненного мухомором:

“A fly-agaric drunkard after drunkenness, as it were, came from the other world; they say that the fly agaric shows him heaven and hell..."

"... for a fly agaric drunkard it is not necessary to talk to outsiders, because he alone speaks, or with his fly agarics, or mimics extraneous words."

Анадырские шаманы прибегали к мухомору как к допингу. Шаман, которого просили полечить или «разгадать какое-нибудь тайное дело», требовал, чтобы его угостили мухомором — «будто бы от того прибавляется сила шаманства».
При отсутствии чая верхнеколымские юкагиры кипятили березовую или осиновую «шишку» (чага) с какими-то «черными грибами» и стеблем шиповника.

From berries they stored in large quantities blueberries, lingonberries, bird cherry. Dried berries were eaten with fish in winter, including yukola. With regard to berries, the Yukaghirs had their own taste preferences. They loved blueberries most of all and even called it "Yukaghir berry" - odun-leveidi. But raspberries were not favored and called "dog berry". They didn't pick currants either.

After the organization of collective farms, the diet of the Yukaghirs began to slowly but steadily change. With the introduction of truck farming into collective farms (in the late 1930s), the Yukaghirs learned the taste of potatoes, cabbage, carrots, turnips, and onions. The development of domestic livestock breeding inspired some Yukaghirs for dairy food. Thanks to the regular delivery of products, the Yukaghirs were able to purchase canned fruits and vegetables, condensed milk, and confectionery in stores. But meat and fish in their natural form are still the most basic and favorite types of their food. [3] ^[3]

 

Составитель Л.Н. Жукова, ИГИиПМНС СО РАН

 

References:

1. В.Н. Федорова. “Блюда народов Якутии” – Якутск: Кн. изд-во, 1990. – 208 с.,ил.
2. Encyclopedia "The Arctic is my home: the peoples of the North", Moscow, 2001.
3. Туголуков В.А. Кто вы, юкагиры? – М.: Наука, 1979. – 152 с., ил.fk