Dish · Kashkadarya, Surkhandarya +1
Tandir kabob (tandoor lamb)
The pride of Kashkadarya, Surkhandarya and Jizzakh: lamb slow-cooked for hours in a sealed tandoor with juniper branches.
Dish · Jizzakh
Jizzakh samsa
Jizzakh’s culinary calling card: a large dome-shaped samsa made from three layers of dough, packed with lamb and tail fat and dipped in sunflower oil.
Photo: Shuhrataxmedov · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What sets it apart
Jizzakh samsa differs from the ordinary kind in size and build. According to the Gastronomic Association of Uzbekistan, the dough is rolled into three rounds about 25 cm across, filled with diced lamb, tail fat, onion, salt and spices, folded into a half-dome and baked in a tandoor for about 25 minutes, the oven walls first sprinkled with salted water.
Elsewhere samsa comes with a tomato-and-vinegar sauce; in Jizzakh people like to dip it in sunflower oil. Locals also call it Kipchak samsa.
Where and when
The Tashkent–Samarkand highway runs through Jizzakh, so many travellers try the local samsa on the way; the town and its outskirts are full of samsa bakeries. Eat it hot, straight from the tandoor — one is a meal in itself. Locals eat it most in early spring, before the heavy work in the fields begins.
Sources (2)
Photos
Dish · Nationwide
Plov (osh)
The centrepiece of any Uzbek meal: meat, onions and yellow carrots are cooked into a rich base in a kazan, then rice is steamed on top. UNESCO-listed since 2016.
Dish · Tashkent (city), Tashkent Region
Tashkent plov
The capital’s style of plov: everything is fried first and the rice is mixed into the base; wedding plov adds kazy sausage, chickpeas, raisins and sometimes quail eggs.
Dish · Samarkand
Samarkand plov
A layered plov in which nothing is stirred: the rice stays pale, and the carrots and meat are served on top of it.
Dish · Bukhara
Bukhara plov and oshi sofi
Bukhara’s own plovs: oshi sofi, made with separately boiled and drained rice, and plov cooked with mung beans.
Dish · Fergana, Andijan +1
Fergana plov
The dark plov of the Fergana Valley: a bone, meat, onions and carrots are fried long and hard until the zirvak turns deep brown.
Dish · Khorezm
Khorezm plov
Khorezm’s plov tradition, including suzma palov, in which the rice is boiled separately and drained before it meets the zirvak.
Dish · Nationwide
Samsa
Flaky pastries baked on the inner wall of a tandoor, filled with hand-chopped lamb, tail fat and onion — or wild greens in spring and pumpkin in autumn.
Dish · Nationwide
Kabob (shashlik)
Skewered meat grilled over embers — lamb, beef, meat with tail fat, liver, minced qiyma (lula) kabob — served with onion, vinegar and hot bread.
Dish · Bukhara
Gijduvan kebab
The famous minced-meat kebab of Gijduvan in Bukhara Region: the meat is minced twice, frozen, chopped and pressed onto skewers.