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EveryCow

Curd and fermented milk

Qurut and aaruul (dried curd)

Strained, salted sour curd rolled into balls or pressed into shapes and dried hard in the sun for the year ahead.

Qurut, kurt or kurut in the Turkic languages and aaruul in Mongolian, is sour curd strained, salted, shaped and dried in the sun until hard. It keeps for months and was the travelling food of steppe herders. Balls are sucked or chewed as a snack, soaked and crushed to make a sour sauce, or dissolved into soups and drinks.

What goes in

Sour milk or yoghurt: 71%71%Salt: 7%Sun and wind: 21%21%3parts
  • Sour milk or yoghurt1071%, From cows, sheep, goats or yaks.
  • Salt17%, Helps it keep.
  • Sun and wind321%, Days of drying.

Rough parts by weight. The ring shows each input's share of the product.

Made step by step

Each drawing shows the operation for that step. Quantities and timings differ from house to house and herd to herd; this is one traditional way, in outline.

  1. Step 1: Ferment Ferment fresh milk overnight into sour milk.
  2. Step 2: Strain Hang it in a cloth bag until it is a thick paste.
  3. Step 3: Shape Salt the paste and roll it into balls or press it into shapes.
  4. Step 4: Dry Dry the pieces in the sun on mats or the yurt roof.
  5. Step 5: Serve Store in bags and serve with tea or dissolve in soup.
  6. Sour milk or yoghurt: 71%71%Salt: 7%Sun and wind: 21%21%
    Finished Qurut and aaruul (dried curd), by share.

Summer milk for winter

On the summer pastures, when animals give the most milk, herders turn the surplus into foods that keep. Fermented milk is strained in cloth bags to a thick paste, salted and rolled in the hands, then laid on reed mats or the roof of the yurt to dry. In Mongolia, aaruul is pressed into shapes and dried on the roof of the ger.

Ways to use it

Kazakh and Kyrgyz families offer qurut with tea, and children carry it in pockets. Dissolved in hot water it makes a sour broth. In Tajikistan qurutob is a dish of flatbread soaked in a sauce of dissolved qurut, eaten from a shared platter. Markets in Almaty, Bishkek and Tashkent sell it plain, smoked or spiced.

Where it is used

Snack with teaQurutobTravel food

The breeds behind it

Kazakh WhiteheadedBeef breed of the Kazakh steppe.KalmykSteppe cattle of Kazakhstan and southern Russia.YakMilked on the high pastures of Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.

Also part of it, and being written: Mongolian cattle (Native cattle of the Mongolian steppe.).

More on EveryCow

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Sources and further reading

About this page

Original text and drawings by the EveryCow desk, written with AI assistance and checked against the sources above. The shares are a rough, illustrative ratio, not a recipe: every family and dairy makes it differently. If we have something wrong, tell us.

Photo credits on this page

The small pictures above come from Wikimedia Commons under free licences. Some are cropped to fit.

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