Food and drink

Kinema

Kinema is fermented soybean: sticky, pungent, and the strongest single body of scholarship on any Limbu cultural item. The Journal of Ethnic Foods states plainly that “the Limboo community, one of the oldest indigenous groups in the Himalayas, has developed a method for fermenting soybeans to produce kinema,” and that “kinema originated in the historical Limbuwan.” The name is given as Limbu ki (fermented) + namba (flavour). Tamang, Jyoti Prakash, et al. 2024 B

Production, as the literature records it:

1. soak the soybeans overnight;
2. boil for two to three hours;
3. split the cotyledons;
4. add about 1% wood ash — a step unique to kinema among the world’s fermented soy foods;
5. ferment in leaf-lined baskets at 25–40°C for one to three days above the kitchen fire.

Jyoti Prakash Tamang, of the Department of Microbiology at Sikkim University, is the central researcher, with fieldwork in Ilam, Dhankuta and Terhathum going back to 1991 and a substantial body of subsequent microbiological and metagenomic work. Tamang, Jyoti Prakash, et al. 2024 B

Sargyangma

Sargyangma (sargemba) is the Limbu blood sausage: “an indigenous sausage product named and made by Limbu ethnic people of Nepal living in Eastern mountain region.” It is made of minced pork belly, blood, liver, heart and fat with rice, spices and yangben, cased in intestine, boiled for one to two hours, then sliced and fried or smoked for storage. A Nepali food-science paper notes it is made “for festive and cultural occasions rather than being a commercial product.” Limbu, Prem Kumar, Devraj Acharya and Dilip Subba 2018 B

Yangben

Yangben is edible lichen — the word is “the local word used by Limbu ethnic community for edible lichen.” It is traditionally processed by cooking in ash water, then washing and drying, and is “an indispensable flavouring ingredient” in sargyangma. Cooked with pork it gives yangben-faksa. Nutritional analysis of three species (Parmelia nepalensis, Ramalina farinacea, R. conduplicans) found them rich in carbohydrate, fat, crude fibre and minerals. It also has ritual use: hung above doorways to ward off evil spirits. Ninglekhu/ku heritage documentation project 2026 B

Two live concerns attach to it — overharvesting as consumption spreads beyond the Limbu, and the sensitivity of lichen to air pollution. Ninglekhu/ku heritage documentation project 2026 C

Tongba

Tongba (thee) is the millet beer: fermented millet packed into a wooden vessel, topped with hot water and drunk through a bamboo straw, refilled repeatedly. It is documented across the eastern hills as inseparable from Limbu hospitality. Ninglekhu/ku heritage documentation project 2026 C