A nomad showpiece in which a whole goat (or traditionally a marmot) is deboned through the neck, filled with scorching stones and onions, tied shut, and torched from the outside so it roasts simultaneously from within and without. The animal's own skin becomes the cooking vessel — no pot, no skewer, no oven.
Also known as: boodog, bodog, Mongolian marmot barbecue, goat boodog, boodog roast
Watch it made
Ingredients
- 1 boned-out goat or lamb leg (about 1.5 kg), butterflied
- 6-8 egg-size smooth granite stones, scrubbed
- 2 onions, sliced
- 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
- 250 ml hot water
How to make it
- 1
Heat the stones in a 250°C oven for 40 minutes while you butterfly the leg and season the inside with salt, pepper, garlic and onion.
- 2
With tongs, lay the scorching stones down the middle, roll the meat around them and tie tightly with butcher's twine — boodog cooks from the inside out.
- 3
Sit the parcel in a covered roasting pot with the hot water and cook at 180°C for about 1 hour 45 minutes.
- 4
Untie, remove the stones, then blast the outside with a blowtorch or your hottest grill setting until blistered and bronzed, echoing the flame-scorched hide of the original.
- 5
Rest 10 minutes and carve thick.
Pro tip: This is the pot-scale homage to the marmot-skin original, and one rule survives intact: the stones do the cooking, so get them genuinely ferocious before they go in.
