Plov: A Traveller's Guide to Uzbekistan's National Dish

No dish says Uzbekistan like plov. It is cooked for weddings and funerals, for Friday lunch and for welcoming guests. In 2016 UNESCO added the culture and tradition of palov to its list of intangible cultural heritage, and once you have eaten a good one, it is easy to see why.

How plov is made

Plov is cooked in a kazan, a heavy cast-iron cauldron, usually over a wood or gas fire. The master cook, the oshpaz, builds it in stages:

• Meat, usually lamb or beef, is browned in very hot oil or fat.
• Onions and a large amount of julienned yellow and red carrots follow.
• Cumin, whole garlic heads and often chickpeas or raisins are added to the base, called zirvak.
• Rice is layered on top and steamed under a lid until each grain is separate.

One dish, many styles

Every region claims the best plov. Tashkent wedding plov is rich and mixed together before serving. In Samarkand the layers are kept apart, with rice on the bottom and meat on top. Bukhara and Fergana have their own versions with different rice, spices and dried fruit. Comparing them is one of the pleasures of a longer journey.

Plov is a lunch dish. Big plov centres start cooking early in the morning and the best kazans are often finished by early afternoon. Plan your plov stop for midday.

Where to try it

• Plov centres: large restaurants in Tashkent where dozens of kazans are cooked at once, a spectacle in itself.
• Teahouses: in every old town, often with a single kazan and loyal regulars.
• Family homes: a home-hosted lunch, sometimes with a chance to help the oshpaz.

For gastronomy programs

We build plov into culinary journeys as a hands-on experience: shopping for carrots and rice at the bazaar, cooking with a local master and eating together in a courtyard. It works well for groups of all sizes and is one of the most requested elements of our food-focused programs.