Now, I should tell you about Altai cuisine in general and about the other dishes that I had a chance to taste.
Like any other nomadic people engaged in livestock breeding rather than crop farming, Altaian cuisine is primarily meat-based. This is almost always mutton—the meat with a smell that many people dislike. In the Altai Republic, all herds graze freely on ecologically clean pastures, and, in my opinion, the mutton here is exceptionally tasty. They primarily eat mutton, not lamb, and use all meat by-products in their cuisine. Like other nomads, Altaians do not grill or fry meat, but boil it, ending up with a nourishing meat dish that replaces soup, considered to be a first course in Russia, and they eat the boiled meat separately as their main hot dish. I was surprised to find out that Altaians consider dishes made from meat by-products to be festive (like dorgom, a meat dish made from braided intestines), and not dishes made from tenderloins.