All activities / Culinary / Cooking / Tashkent
Culinary / Cooking in Tashkent
Uzbekistan's capital and largest city, a green, Soviet-planned metropolis with the sprawling Chorsu bazaar, a strong food culture built around plov, and the country's main international gateway and rail hub for the Silk Road cities.
Why here
Plov, known locally as osh or palov, is the national dish of Uzbekistan and the centre of its food culture, cooked in a huge cast-iron kazan with rice, yellow carrots, mutton and cumin until each grain stands separate. It matters enough that Uzbek plov and the hospitality around it are inscribed on the UNESCO list of intangible cultural heritage. Tashkent, the capital, is the best base to learn it. A hands-on class starts at a bazaar such as Chorsu, where you choose the right rice, carrots and cut of meat, then moves to a kitchen to build the dish layer by layer and steam it in the kazan. Along the way you usually pick up samsa and the tea ritual as well. It is a direct and tasty way into a culture that measures welcome by the size of the plov.
Best months
Cooking classes run year round and take place indoors, so any season works. The market walk that opens most classes is freshest in the morning. Summer in Tashkent is hot, spring and autumn mild, and winter cold, but none of that affects a kitchen session. Classes usually last two to three hours and end with a shared meal, so they are best planned as a half day rather than squeezed between other sights.
Getting there & around
Tashkent has the country's main international airport and is the hub of the high-speed rail network to Samarkand and Bukhara, so a cooking class slots easily into an arrival or departure day. Classes are held in central kitchens or family homes reached by metro or taxi, and the Chorsu bazaar market walk is part of many of them. Book ahead, as sessions are small.
Skill levels: beginner
Schools & guides (1)
Central Asia Journeys
SchoolCentral Asia Journeys is a Tashkent tour operator that has run trips and food experiences in the region since 1996. Its cooking classes are taught in small groups over two to three hours and cover the national dishes, from plov and lagman to kazan-kebab, dimlama and moshkichiri, often starting with a market walk to choose rice, yellow carrots and meat. Sessions are led by local cooks, book directly rather than through a marketplace, and end with the group eating what they cooked.