Etiquette for Kazakhstan’s “Kurt”

“Kurt is the strength of a person; dairy is the wealth of the nation” — Old Kazakh saying

Kurt: The Misunderstood Kazakh Specialty

Since childhood, I have loved the days when my mother came home with kurt from the aul (the traditional Kazakh countryside village). Those small round salty balls were the greatest delicacy I knew. Wherever I travelled in later years, I carried some with me whenever I could, and I would offer them to people who had never heard of such a thing. Almost always, the same question came back and it never stopped surprising me: why is it salty?

The question is a fair one, and its answer is the whole story. People expect kurt to behave like the food it resembles. It doesn't. Its name is kurt (құрт), it is one of the oldest foods still eaten in Central Asia, and, despite what nearly everyone calls it, it is not cheese.

For the people of the steppe it was never merely food. It was survival made portable: milk transformed into something that would not spoil, would not rot, and could be carried across a winter or a thousand kilometres of open country.

A sack of curd in a frozen tomb

In 1947, archaeologists excavating the frozen Pazyryk burial mounds in the Altai are said to have found a bag of cheese-like curd, left as an offering to the dead more than 2,500 years ago — most likely, if so, an ancestor of kurt. Chinese chronicles describe steppe nomads making fermented milk and dried curds as early as the first millennium BC. For herders who moved with the seasons this was less a recipe than a technology: an answer to the hard question of how to keep summer's abundance alive through a killing continental winter.

The secret in the milk

It all began with a starter culture — the most closely guarded thing in the dairy. Families kept dependable cultured milks for the purpose, but they also improvised, dropping silver rings, old coins, soot, or melon seeds into warm milk: no magic, only the wild microbes clinging to them, enough to begin the souring. A reliable ferment was inherited and quietly famous. In every aul, people knew which household kept the most trustworthy one, and came asking for a portion when their own failed.

Boiled down, wrung by hand: Shapes and traditional techniques

From fermented milk the herders churned butter, then simmered what remained over a low fire until it thickened, and hung it in cloth bags to let the whey drip away. What stayed behind was a dense, tart curd (süzbe), the raw material of Kurt.

Once this curd was obtained, the shaping began. The form depended on its purpose, on local tradition, and on the density of the mass:
• Syqpa (сықпа): wrung in a closed fist (from sygu, "to squeeze"), it kept the maker's fingerprints on its surface — eaten soft, or only lightly dried.
• Döñgelek (дөңгелек): rolled by hand into spheres that dried hard, ideal for storage in sacks through the winter.
• Jarma (жарма): the curd spread in a wide bowl to dry, its crust broken off in layers as it formed (from zharu, "to break off") — a slow, layered drying.
• Irregular pieces: small, shapeless fragments made in haste, meant to be dissolved quickly in hot liquids.

The drying was done under open sun on flat wooden platters (tabaq), reed mats (öreshi), or drying racks (öre, söre). It was often shared work among the women of a family or village — a task that doubled as a school of craft, passing technique quietly from one generation to the next.

Which shape a household made depended, above all, on when it was for. The hard round and layered kinds — döñgelek and jarma — were winter kurt: dried for long keeping and eaten through the cold months, dropped into sorpa or köje (a grain broth). Soft syqpa was tea kurt, made fresh or only lightly dried and taken in any season.

The opposite of cheese

Here is why the salty little ball is not what it seems. Cheese is made by curdling milk and letting it ripen; ageing is the point. Kurt is made the other way — by long boiling, salting, and solar drying. It does not ripen. It simply endures.

It was treated as a remedy, good for the stomach. Kurt, rich in calcium, boosts metabolism and strengthens bone tissue, which is why its regular consumption is believed to reduce the risk of osteoporosis. Furthermore, calcium plays a key role in collagen synthesis, making Kurt a natural aid in fighting skin aging.

What a machine changed

The kurt of a century ago tasted different, and the reason is a machine. From the 1920s, cream separators stripped the milk of its fat, and kurt made from skimmed milk came out harder, darker, and faintly bitter — more winter reserve than pleasure. Older still was the milk itself: before the twentieth century Kazakh dairying rested largely on sheep's milk, far fattier than cow's, which made a softer, richer kurt prized above the rest.

Etiquette for Eating Kurt

Kurt’s versatility shows in how it is eaten and how it is served. 

• It can be eaten 3 ways. Kurt can be chewed like a hard cracker, or held in the cheek and dissolved slowly like a sweet — the simplest and most common way. 
• Kurt can be  reconstituted: by dropping a few balls or fragments into hot water or, better, meat broth (sorpa); within minutes the kurt softened into a thick, warming, sour-milk drink that restored strength and could even stand in for tea, 
• And Kurt can be eaten as a seasoning: crumbled dry into soups and stews, a natural enhancer that lends a savoury saltiness and a pleasant tang.
• Tradition governs when Kurt appears at a proper meal. It is almost never a course of its own, but enters at set moments. At the tea table (dastarkhan): soft or lightly dried syqpa kurt is set out in bowls with baursaks (fried dough), sweets, and hot tea — an informal, savoury note among the sweet. With the closing broth: once the main dish of meat (beshbarmak) is done, guests are served bowls of hot sorpa, and Kurt goes in - but hospitality and etiquette forbids dropping a hard whole ball into a guest's bowl; it is first softened into a smooth paste to be spooned in, or finely crumbled, so each guest can adjust the salt and tang of their own broth.
• As a finger food, Kurt on a shared platter, is always taken with one’s right hand

What remains

In modern times, Kurt has lost its old role as a critical winter survival reserve. Today, local producers and restaurants often rely on a single, standardized type of Kurt for all dishes, yet they experiment with its form, textures, and pairings, adapting this ancient staple for tourism and contemporary fine dining.

Yet it has not left the culture — Kurt has become something more: a marker of identity, a taste that still carries the memory of the steppe. That, more than nutrition, may be its truest value now. It is also, I think, why I still travel with a handful of these salty white spheres in my bag.

                                                  

Contributor, Liliya Badayeva  is an Etiquette Consultant and Specialist was born in Turkestan, the sacred historical city of Kazakhstan. She graduated from the prestigious British etiquette school The English Manner under the Train the Trainer program, and also trained under leading Russian, Swiss, and French etiquette authorities. L

iliya brings a wealth of practical experience gained while working with international companies in both the UK and Kazakhstan. She consults on refined manners and executive presence, and is a guest columnist for the Kazakhstani business publication Business World (Бизнес Мир). She shares her insights on her Instagram page (@liliya_noblemanners) and her Telegram channel (Noble Manners / Благородные Манеры).

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