Not Quite What the Name Says: Mongolian BBQ

Many times, a name can be misleading. For example - rocky mountain oysters are as far from seafood as they are from the ocean. In fact, many foods are rather misnamed, and these misnomers can confuse customers into ordering something they may not really like. This happens a lot with foods labeled as barbecue.

Barbecue itself usually refers to a grill, but sometimes it can refer to a type of sauce. This sauce, smothered on anything, anytime, can transform any food into barbecue, even though it may never have touched the surface of a grill. On the other hand, the New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp is actually baked, not grilled - a barbecue has nothing to do with it. In a similar vein, Mongolian BBQ, an increasingly-popular style of cooking, is as far from barbecue as possible, but quite tasty.

A Confusing Choice

Mongolian BBQ is a style of cooking often found in restaurants. Meats and vegetables are stir-fried on a large iron griddle, cooked at temperatures as high as 300 degrees Celsius. Originating from Taiwan, the style of cooking is neither Mongolian nor barbecue, and is, in many ways, a completely unique, but misnamed, cooking style.

New to the restaurant world, Mongolian BBQ first appeared in Taiwan near the end of the 20th century. The stir-frying style is meant to evoke the spirit and technique of Mongolian cuisine, but it more closely resembles traditional Japanese cooking. Many restaurants, however, have perpetuated the myth of the Mongolian BBQ, claiming that the soldiers of the Mongol Empire prepared food with their swords and cooked them on their shields, overturned and placed over a large fire.

In a restaurant setting, diners choose their Mongolian BBQ ingredients from a buffet - a large collection of thinly-sliced meats and vegetables. They then bring their ingredients in a bowl or on a plate to the griddle cook, and can ask for any number of special sauces and seasonings. Each bowl of food is stir-fried on a different part of the griddle, and when the meal is finished, it is returned to the bowl and returned to the diner.

Mongolian BBQ restaurants are popular throughout Taiwan. In the United States, this style of cooking is usually found at Chinese buffet restaurants - however, some restaurants specialize in Mongolian BBQ, preferring it over traditional Chinese offerings. Some restaurant chains have even spread throughout Europe and into the Middle East, spreading this misnamed style of cooking from one side of the globe to the other.