Kashk (Persian: کشک Kašk, Turkish: keş), (Sorani Kurdish: کەشک) qurut (Tuvan and Kyrgyz: курут, Kazakh: құрт, Turkmen: gurt, Uzbek: qurut, Azerbaijani: qurut, Tajik: қурут, Pashto: قروت, Turkish: kurut), chortan (Armenian: չորթան chort’an), or aaruul and khuruud (Mongolian: ааруул or хурууд) is a range of dairy products popular in Iranian cuisine, Caucasian cuisine, and Central Asian cuisine.

[7][8] This coarse powder can be used to thicken soups and stews and improve their flavor, or as an ingredient in various meat, rice or vegetable dishes.

[12] Kashk dairy products can be found in the cuisines of Iran, Tajikistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, the Caucasus, and Turkey.

There are many varied names for this class of dishes including jameed (Arabic: جميد), chortan (Armenian: չորթան) and aaruul, khuruud (Mongolian: ааруул, хурууд).

[17] The word Kashk is also mentioned in the Middle Persian text Xusraw ud rēdag in adjectival form: ārd ī kaškēn.

Charles Perry offers an alternate explanation based on the 13th century Arabic cookbook Wasf al-Atimah al-Mutadah which says dried yogurt was a Turkomen-style "kashk".

[21] For traditionally prepared qurut water is added to full fat yogurt and poured into a goatskin "churn" - a sack hung from a tripod that is swung back and forth until the milk separates into a type of butter and buttermilk.

[21] While traveling in the Baluchistan English explorer Ernest Ayscoghe Floyer encountered this form of kashk:[22] ...from the butter manufacture is left the buttermilk called "dōgh."

This is boiled, and the remainder is "luch"; this is pressed and dried, and becomes "shilanch", or in Persian, "kashk," a hard, white biscuit of very sour cheese.

[9] In western parts of Azerbaijan boiled flat dough is layered with a qurut white sauce and chicken to make Azerbaijani xəngəl.

In eastern Turkey, especially Erzincan, Erzurum, and Kars, kurut is produced from skimmed yogurt made from the whey left over from production of butter by the yayık method,[28] and then crushed or rolled.

In Lebanon, the mix is salted and traditionally set to ferment in large clay jars for up to three weeks, during which it is regularly kneaded.

In Lebanese cuisine, kishk is commonly used to this day, mixed with tomato paste, as a topping for manakish, a sort of flatbread cooked in an open oven and eaten for breakfast or a lunch.

Traditionally, it would also be served with eggs, as a kibbeh stuffing, or in a soup, possibly with lamb meat fried in its own fat (awarma).

A 10th-century recipe for kishk recorded in the Kitab al-Tabikh was made by par-boiling dehulled wheat, milling it, and blending it with chickpea flour.

After 15 days the dough would be seasoned with mint, purslane, cilantro, rue, parsley, garlic and the leafy tops of leeks, shaped into disks, and allowed to dry in the sun.