A simple yet luxurious meal: the “Muas”
Enjoy your meal!
According to an old custom, everyone eats this traditional Tyrolean peasant dish together, spooning it directly from the cast-iron skillet. Discover the Ötztal traditions of cooking and dining. And be sure to try the recipe from the Sölder Alm Gampe Thaya!
On taste and habit
The ingredients for “Muas” are basically simple: butter, flour, milk, a little water, and salt. Still, it’s not easy to mix up a really good “Muas.” Of course, fresh butter and milk straight from the alpine pasture are what make the flavor perfect. When it comes to the flour, there’s some leeway. In the Ötztal, only white cornmeal is used. Coarse and fine cornmeal are mixed together, as they do at the Gampe Thaya, but depending on your preference, you can also use only fine or only coarse cornmeal. In other parts of Tyrol, wheat flour or mixtures of wheat and cornmeal are also used. Almost every valley and every farm has its own traditions and preferences.
Cooking with feeling
As a general rule, you shouldn’t expect measurements down to the milliliter or gram in traditional farm recipes. Every farmer’s wife prepares her traditional dishes using her judgment and intuition, honed by years—or even decades—of experience. So for the Muas recipe below, be sure to pay special attention to the preparation tips; they’ll help you achieve the perfect porridge consistency.
The best is at the bottom
Authentic “Muas” is prepared in a cast-iron skillet over an open wood-burning stove. This is the only way to achieve an even, delicious brown crust on the bottom of the skillet—known as “Scharre” in the Ötztal dialect. It results from the perfect combination of a well-regulated flame from below and expert stirring from above. It’s important to use a wooden cooking spoon to continue stirring after whisking in the flour, and under no circumstances should you scrape or poke at the bottom of the pan while stirring. That would ruin the “Scharre”! Modern kitchens rarely have wood-burning stoves anymore. The best alternative is a gas stove; you can achieve a reasonably good “Scharre” on it.
Eating together makes us strong!
In the old days, “Muas” was served almost daily in the alpine pastures and farmhouses of Tyrol. Fresh milk and flour were always on hand. The dish can be prepared relatively quickly for a large group of people, and it’s also very filling. Even today, eating Muas is a ritual with set rules. The pan is placed in the center of the table, and diners sit around it. Everyone gets a spoon and focuses on the portion of the porridge directly in front of them. Starting at the edge of the pan, each person carefully spoons their way through the porridge from their seat, working down to the scraper and forward toward the center of the pan. Scrape the scraper clean—and enjoy your meal!
Recipe for two people
Ingredients:
- 100 g butter
- 45 to 50 g white cornmeal (fine)
- 45 to 50 g white cornmeal (coarse)
- 500 to 750 ml milk
- 1 ladle of water 1 tsp salt
Preparation:
Mix the fine and coarse cornmeal. Melt 50 g of butter in a cast-iron pan over an open flame. Add a ladleful of water. Pour in half a liter of milk to start. Add salt to taste. Bring the liquid to a boil. Stir the cornmeal into the boiling liquid one spoonful at a time, using a whisk. Depending on the consistency of the flour, immediately add more milk until a soft porridge forms. Simmer over moderate heat for about 15 minutes, stirring constantly with a wooden spoon, until a brown crust, the “Scharre,” has formed on the bottom of the pan. Stir most vigorously in the center of the pan.
Melt the remaining butter in a saucepan. Place the muas pan on a trivet or cutting board and immediately baste it with the melted butter.
Tips from Gampe Thaya
The best way to tell if you’ve stirred in enough flour is when the milk porridge starts to form small bubbles. In the Ötztal valley, there’s a saying about this: “The porridge gets eyes. You mustn’t add anything else to the eyes, or they’ll go blind.” So stop stirring in flour immediately when you see the bubbles, so that the porridge doesn’t become “blind”—that is, too thick and too sticky. You need to pour the melted butter over the finished “Muas” as quickly and evenly as possible so that a milk skin doesn’t form on its surface.
Gampe Thaya: back to the roots
The Gampe Thaya is an alpine inn located in the hiking and skiing area high above Sölden. Here, the best of Tyrol is served up with regional products, such as apples from the Oberland, potatoes from the Upper Inn Valley, meat from Tyrolean Gray Cattle, and vegetables from North Tyrol. That’s why the alpine inn has been a “Genuss Hütte” since 2014, awarded the seal of quality by Genuss Region Austria. Although “Muas” isn’t officially on the menu, it can be pre-ordered for groups. And once every late summer, the wood-fired stove burns almost all day for the ritual Muas meal.
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This article was originally published in August 2018 and was updated on July 06, 2026.
Isolde von Mersi
Isolde von Mersi (b. 1954, d. 2023) was originally from the Pustertal Valley in South Tyrol and lived in Vienna. As a reporter and author, she explored the cultural, culinary, and natural history treasures of the Alpine countries and their inhabitants for German and Austrian magazines and publishers. Through her work for ÖTZTAL MAGAZIN, she had felt at home in the Ötztal Valley for many years, surrounded by some of her very best friends. Thank you, dear Isolde!