🇸🇴 The cattle breeds of Somalia

Cattle thread quietly through Somali food: beef is one of the everyday halal meats, and milk, butter and ghee flavour breakfast breads, porridges and sweets. Mutton is the meat Somalis eat most, and camels are the classic herd of the pastoralists, so cattle count here chiefly in the kitchen and the teacup.

• Beef is one of Somalia's everyday meats, always prepared halal.
• Mutton, not beef, is the meat Somalis eat most.
• Subag, a Somali ghee, tops the breakfast bread canjeero.
• Oodkac is dried beef boiled in ghee so that it keeps.
• Cardamom-scented milk is a common bedtime drink.

Cattle in Somalia

Somali cattle keeping shows itself above all at the table, and in a modest role. The country's food grows out of nomadic herding and old sea trade, and nearly all meat eaten is halal, with pork forbidden under Islamic law. Beef appears among the halal meats of the table, with goat, camel, lamb and fish, though mutton, not beef, is the meat Somalis eat most, and camels are the traditional animals of the pastoralists. Where cattle count most is dairy: ghee, butter and milk run through the day's cooking, from breakfast flatbreads to the bedtime glass of milk. Meals differ between town and country, city tables carrying more fruit and vegetables, rural ones staying plainer.

Milk, butter and beef

Dairy is the cattle's chief gift to the Somali table. Subag, a Somali ghee, is spooned over the breakfast bread canjeero with honey or oil, or worked into it with sugar. Oodkac, or muqmad, is dried beef in small bits, boiled in ghee so that it keeps, and morning sides include beef liver, diced beef and kidneys served in soup. Butter and fresh milk mash into asida, a cornmeal dish, and butter goes into porridge and into the dinner beans of cambuulo. A cardamom-scented glass of milk often ends the day, and a milk-based jallaato is a newer treat in Mogadishu, where beef steak, busteeki, is also widely eaten.