🍽️ Ili Horse Meat Naren

Horse meat with noodles, Kazakh style.

Ili Horse-Meat Naren is a traditional Kazakh dish of Ili Kazakh Autonomous Prefecture in Xinjiang. Horse meat, often with horse sausage, is boiled until tender, shredded over hand-rolled wide noodles, ladled with the cooking broth and topped with raw onion strips. The meat is deeply fragrant, the noodles soak up the broth, and the onion cuts the richness; it is a festival and hospitality centerpiece of the grasslands. Boiling the meat until it yields without drying out, and rolling the noodles thick enough, are the craft. Kazakhs serve naren at weddings and singing gatherings, with guests eating by hand around one platter. Visitors to Ili's yurts taste in one dish the nomadic generosity and horseback food culture of the Central Asian steppe.