Limbu Preserve · Smoked Dried Meat

Sukuti

Photo: Raunak Maskay / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0

Limbu households call it sakhekya, and it's smoked simply by hanging the meat above the kitchen fire pit — no dedicated smokehouse required.

Strips of buffalo or goat meat are trimmed of fat, rubbed with salt, chili, turmeric and cumin, then hung above a wood-fired hearth until the smoke dries them into deeply savory jerky. Vendors in eastern hill towns pan-sear or deep-fry it to order and serve it with onion, tomato and coriander as a spicy bar snack.

Why it's made this way: It grew out of Himalayan communities' need to preserve meat from temple sacrifices and winter slaughter through months when fresh food was scarce, a practice especially strong among the Limbu people of Nepal's eastern hills.