Dish · Khorezm, Karakalpakstan
Tukhum barak
Khorezm’s signature dish: delicate boiled dumplings filled with raw egg mixed with milk or butter.
Dish · Karakalpakstan
Karakalpak beshbarmak (turama)
The Karakalpaks’ festive dish: boiled meat and sorghum-flour dumplings are finely chopped, mixed and served on a shared platter with broth.
Photo: Miss Kamola · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
What turama is
Beshbarmak, the ancient Turkic dish of meat and dough, goes by many names: Uzbeks call it norin, Kazakhs et or naryn, and Karakalpaks turama, meaning ‘chopped’. Karakalpak turama is finely chopped boiled meat mixed with chopped dumplings, made mostly from jugari (sorghum) flour.
It is a social dish too: the older men cut up the boiled meat, while everyone else chops the dumplings, and then the two are mixed.
How it is served
For three or more people turama is served on a shared platter with broth poured over the top, sometimes along with tuzlyk or serebe, a sauce of chopped onion and fat from the boiled meat. It is a dish for guests and holidays; national-food restaurants in Nukus and around Karakalpakstan, as well as family guesthouses, will make it if you order ahead.
Photos
Dish · Karakalpakstan, Khorezm
Juvari gurtik
An old dish of Karakalpak and Khorezm cooking: coin-shaped sorghum-flour dumplings simmered in meat broth.
Dish · Nationwide
Plov (osh)
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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
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Dish · Bukhara
Bukhara plov and oshi sofi
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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
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