Dish · Tashkent (city), Fergana
Patir (Tashkent patir)
A rich, layered tandoor bread made with butter, cracklings or onion; Tashkent and the Fergana Valley bake dozens of kinds.
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.
Photo: Jamshid Nurkulov · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
The Tashkent style
Tashkent cooks make qovurma, or fried, plov: meat, onions and carrots are browned together in the kazan, and at the end of steaming the rice is folded into the zirvak before it goes onto the platter. The result is lighter in colour than Fergana plov but darker than Samarkand’s. It is topped with sliced meat and, for celebrations, rounds of kazy horse-meat sausage and boiled quail eggs.
Wedding plov, known as to‘y oshi or nahor oshi, almost always includes chickpeas and raisins, which add sweetness and a festive look.
Where to try it
For Tashkent residents plov is an everyday lunch. Canteens and big ‘plov centres’ across the city cook it in huge kazans, and the busiest hours are roughly 11am to 2pm. At some you order right at the cauldron, saying how much meat or kazy you want. It is eaten with achichuk salad, qatiq yoghurt and green tea.
Photos
Dish · Tashkent (city), Tashkent Region
Norin (naryn)
A Tashkent speciality of horse meat and thin noodles cut into fine shreds, served cold with kazy or in hot broth.
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 · 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.