Central Highland Staple · Buckwheat Noodles
Puta
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The noodles are still pressed by hand through a wooden tool called a puta-par, a method locals trace back to at least the early 1500s, when it turns up in the biography of the Bhutanese saint Pema Lingpa.
Buckwheat dough is forced through a wooden press directly into boiling water, then the noodles are drained and pan-fried with butter, onion, and chili until they pick up a nutty, faintly bitter flavor. Bumthang's market stalls and farmhouse kitchens serve it as a filling everyday plate, no rice required.
Why it's made this way: Bumthang sits too high and cold for rice paddies to thrive, so its farmers have grown buckwheat as the default grain for centuries, and puta became the valley's answer to the noodles or rice found everywhere else in Bhutan.
Roughly what's in it
390kcal
11gprotein
58gcarbs
13gfat
Estimated per typical street-vendor portion — not lab-tested.
More from Bhutan
Part of World of Street Food — 3248 dishes from 118 countries.
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