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
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.
Photo: Panpanchik · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Straight from the tandoor
Samsa is baked all over Central Asia, but the Uzbek tandoor version owes its character to dough and fire. The pastry is rolled thin, brushed with fat and wound into layers; the filling is knife-chopped, never minced, lamb with plenty of onion, a little tail fat, cumin and pepper. Triangles, squares or rounds are sprinkled with sesame and slapped onto the wall of a blazing tandoor. A good samsa shatters when you bite it while the juices stay inside.
The filling follows the seasons: ko‘k somsa with wild greens in spring, pumpkin in autumn, and liver, potato or flaky varaqi samsa all year.
How to choose
Buy samsa at the oven, freshly peeled off the wall. In most towns samsa bakeries open in the morning and keep their tandoors going until lunch; a queue of locals is the surest sign of a good one. Meat samsa is filling — one or two make breakfast — and goes well with green tea, a fresh chilli or tomato salad. Jizzakh’s outsize samsa has its own entry.
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 · 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.
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.