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 · Nationwide
Lagman
Long hand-pulled noodles topped with a sauté of meat and vegetables — a Uyghur dish that has become an everyday staple in Uzbekistan.
Photo: EugSan · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Pulled noodles
Lagman is built on long, springy noodles pulled by hand. The cook stretches and folds a rope of dough again and again until it becomes fine strands, which are then boiled. Over them goes a sauté of lamb or beef with sweet peppers, radish, carrot, tomato, garlic and herbs.
The dish comes from Uyghur cuisine and is eaten throughout Central Asia. In Uzbekistan it is served either brothier, almost as a soup, or as qovurma lagman, with the noodles stir-fried together with the sauce.
Where to eat it
Almost every national-food canteen and teahouse has lagman, and Uyghur and Dungan kitchens are particularly skilled at it. Pick a place with an open kitchen to watch the noodles being pulled. Locals add vinegar or chilli oil at the table.
Sources (2)
Photos
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 · 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.
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.