The most common food and drink in Mesopotamia was bread and beer. According to the Epic of Gilgamesh beer was one of the blessings of civilization. A mash of barley or wheat was flavoured with herbs and allowed to ferment. Date syrup or honey was added to help the process. It was then mixed with water and filtered. The beer was very nutritious and texts describe how it was drunk warm. It is often shown being drunk through straws to avoid the scum which was floating on the surface.

Although a lot is known about what was eaten in Mesopotamia (see Farming) our knowledge of cooking is restricted to the kitchens of the most important people in society, especially the kitchens of the gods. It is likely that everyday food would have been similar, though meat was probably a luxury. The most frequently mentioned meats include fowl, pigeon, mutton, beef and gazelle.

The diet included lots of raw foods, especially vegetables and fruits. Of the other foodstuffs consumed in quantities foremost was fish, but also eggs, crustaceans, turtles and locusts.

Cooking was done in a domed oven (closed chamber), or in hot ashes. Meat was roasted, grilled or spit-roasted although boiling is also mentioned in some texts.

Some recipes for meat dishes survive, written on cuneiform tablets. Some of the ingredients cannot be translated but in these recipes the procedure was to boil parts of the same animal whose meat was being cooked, adding in some fat (fresh mutton fat with the gristle removed). The item to be cooked was put in the broth, put on the fire and heated. Sometimes the meat was seared before boiling. To add flavour other parts of the animal or another type of meat was added. Other ingredients could be included such as garlic, leek, salt, coriander or cumin.