Dish · Khorezm, Karakalpakstan
Tukhum barak
Khorezm’s signature dish: delicate boiled dumplings filled with raw egg mixed with milk or butter.
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.
Photo: Kagansky · CC BY-SA 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Suzma palov
Plov rules the table in Khorezm too, but with a local twist. Uzbek encyclopaedic sources single out suzma palov as the Khorezm type: the rice is boiled apart from the zirvak in plenty of water, drained and only then combined with the base and steamed. Russian Wikipedia cites this method, together with Bukhara’s oshi sofi, as the exception among Central Asian plovs.
Khorezm cooking even has its own books, such as Bakhtiyor Dustjonov’s Khorezm Dishes (1994).
Plov in the oasis
In Khiva and Urgench plov is the main dish at weddings and memorial gatherings. It shares the table with tukhum barak, shivit oshi and other local dishes covered in their own entries. Teahouses and family guesthouses around Itchan Kala will cook Khorezm plov if you order in advance.
Dish · Khorezm
Shivit oshi
Known as ‘Khorezm’ or ‘green’ lagman: dill-flavoured noodles (shivit means dill) served with a meat sauce and suzma; sources trace the dish to Khiva.
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)
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 · 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.