A platter of horse meat served traditionally as an appetizer.

Common and traditional dishes Besbarmak, a dish consisting of boiled horse or mutton meat, is the most popular Kazakh dish. It is also called “five fingers” because of the way it is eaten. The chunks of boiled meat are cut and served by the host in order of the guests’ importance. Besbarmak is usually eaten with a boiled pasta sheet and a meat both called shorpa, and is traditionally served in Kazakh bowls called kese.

Other popular meat dishes are kazy (which is a horsemeat sausage that only the wealthy could afford), shuzhuk (horsemeat sausages), kuyrdak (also spelled kuirdak, a dish made from roasted horse, sheep, or cow offal, such as heart, liver, kidneys, and other organs, diced and served with onions and peppers), and various horse delicacies, such as zhal (smoked lard from horse's neck) and zhaya (salted and smoked meat from horse's hip and hind leg).

Manti, a very popular Kazakh dish, is a spiced mixture of ground lamb (or beef) spiced with black pepper, enclosed in a dough wrapper. Manti are cooked in a multi-level steamer and served topped with butter, sour cream, or onion sauce.

The introduction of flour to Kazakh cuisine brought about dishes such as baursak, shelpek. Baursak is made by frying dough balls, and shelpek is a flat cake made in a similar fashion.

Irimzhik is a cottage cheese processed in the spring, made from boiled, unskimmed milk and added sour cream. Suzbe and katyk are strained and thickened sour milk. Koryktyk is a herdsman’s food, which is thickened milk made out on the steppe.

Shubat (fermented camel’s milk) and Kumys (fermented mare’s milk) are seen as good for one’s health and is imbibed often.