Kazakhstan
Nomad food on the world's biggest steppe: horsemeat over noodles, fermented mare's milk and endless milky tea.
To eat in Kazakhstan is to sit down to the steppe. The national dish, beshbarmak — 'five fingers' — is boiled horsemeat and flat sheets of noodle in broth, laid on a communal platter and eaten by hand, the honoured guest offered the richest cuts and, at the grandest tables, a boiled sheep's head to carve and share.
This is nomad cooking, unapologetically meaty: cured horsemeat kazy sliced thin, kuyrdak of fried offal and potato, steamed manty dumplings, puffs of fried baursak bread piled in bowls. The drinks are the adventure — sour, fizzy kumis from fermented mare's milk, and shubat from camel's — while tea, milky and endless, is the true cornerstone of hospitality, your cup topped up before it's empty. Beyond the yurt, Almaty's bazaars pile high with Korean-diaspora salads and Uyghur noodles, the Silk Road still on the plate.
- Beshbarmak (horsemeat over noodles)
- Kazy (cured horsemeat sausage)
- Manty (steamed dumplings)
- Kuyrdak (fried offal & potato)
- Baursak (fried dough puffs)
- Kumis (fermented mare's milk)
- Shai (milk tea)
