Kazakh national cuisine

Kazakh national cuisine is historically based on the nomadic way of life of Kazakhs. Kazakh national cuisine is similar to other neighbor cuisines as Kyrgyz cuisine, Uzbek cuisine, Chinese cuisine and from Russian cuisine is different in preparation and receipt.  Most of the traditional dishes of Kazakh cuisine are hearty meat and flour dishes. For cooking dishes, lamb, beef, horse meat, and less often camel are widely used.

The major meal of Kazakh cuisine is besbarmak (beshbarmak). It is made of horse meat or mutton (also, it might be beef and camel) with boiled in a broth sliced with small pieces of dough and abundantly sprinkled with herbs of dill, parsley and cilantro. Besbarmak is translated as ”five fingers” which means, that this meal was eaten by using 5 fingers.

Also popular meal is kuyrdak- national Kazakh fried, that is prepared from meat and and other ingredients such as kidneys, heart, liver, and also with adding onion, and a big amount of greenery and potatoes.

Kazy- is a sausage, made of of the abdominal and ribs of horse meat and is the most famous Kazakh delicacy.

Sorpa- is a wonderful first course and rich lamb soup with pasta.

Palau (pilav)- is prepared in a iron pot with a lot of meat - lamb, vegetables and rice.

Syrne- is a meat ragout prepared from lamb.

Besides meat dishes, there is a wide variety of dairy dishes and drinks: Kumis (mare’s milk), Shubat (camel's sour milk), ayran (kind of yogurt), kaymak (analogue of sour cream), kylegey (cream), sary-may (salted butter), katyk (between yogurt and curd), kurt (hard salted curd or salted cheese), irymshyk (hard cheese from sheep's milk), koje (milk drink with cereals) and others.

There are three types of traditional bread: baursaks- round or square pieces of dough fried in boiling oil in cauldron, tandyr bread- baked on the inside of a tandyr oven, shelpek- breads that are fried in the boiled oil. 

Tea is the main type of drink here. Any dastarkhan (meal) begins and end with drinking the tea. And Kazakh tea is very strong and with cream or with milk.  

Kazakh national cuisine photos

Posted by Centralasia Adventures

Touristic company “Asia adventures” - DMC operator in Central Asia.
Already 26 years, we organize any possible tours in Uzbekistan and other neighbor republics as Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Kashgar (Western China) and the Caucasian region (Azerbaijan, Georgia, Armenia).