Uzbek Garlic Recipes

Uzbek cuisine — Plov, samsa, lagman — hearty Silk Road cooking from the heart of Central Asia — brings its own distinctive techniques and seasonings to every ingredient it touches. When Uzbek cooks work with garlic, they reach for its own regional aromatics, fats and signature spice blends, and the techniques that come up most across these recipes are simmering, boiling, steaming and searing.

The aromatic foundation of savoury cooking almost everywhere — pungent raw, sweet and mellow when cooked. In this collection it's most often cooked with fine sea salt, ground cumin, onion, carrots, tomatoes and lamb shoulder. The dishes here span uzbek classics ready in as little as 32 minutes to slower, more involved cooking that rewards a relaxed afternoon.

Reader favourite: Samarkand Plov is the highest-rated dish in this collection at 4.9★ from 1,450 ratings.