3,000KG PLOV / PILAF IN TASHKENT, UZBEKISTAN 🇺🇿 (Crazy street food)

Hello from Tashkent! You know that plov is a national dish in Uzbekistan and today we're in the best place in Tashkent, if not the whole Central Asia, to witness how this beauty is cooked. Feeling so lucky? Let's go in! The Central Asian Plov Center is located in the heart of Tashkent. Thousands of locals and tourists stream in here every day to sample Uzbekistan's national dish. The chefs start at 5 30 and make over a ton of plov every single day. We got the chance to see the entire process from start to finish. So that it doesn't break. So that it doesn't fall apart. Wedding plov is made of lamb and beef, right? Thank you. It's very tasty, thank you very much. Yes, yes. Here, right? Yes, here, of course. Is it butter? No, it's not butter. It's a little buttery, it's normal. Come, come. We're finally coming inside to try three different types of plov. Here we've got the special one. It's this one, it's made of olive oil. This one is the wedding one. And I've got here, it's chayhana plov. And there's one way to try all of them. This one, I was just over the moon. It just showed how different they all taste. This one is even more meatier. It's really incredibly rich. And even though every single type of plov, even though they use so much oil, it doesn't taste oily at all. And I love that it doesn't all sort of clunk in together. The rice is all like separate, one by one. It's incredibly, it's just seasoned so beautifully. You can taste the spices in there. They added some hot chili, but it's not overly spicy. You get a hint of it sometimes. And the way they cook their garlic as well. That's just, that's my favourite part in plov, is the garlic. And also, they put these bits of crackling in there too. I'm gonna go for that one. And also, meat itself tastes really different because it's fried, so it's cooked differently. Even though they sort of fry the meat at first, and all the other different plovs, afterwards it's been steamed and this one is fried. Hence why the flavour of it obviously is very different as well. Very rich and very delicious. Right, so you've probably heard Julia doing a lot of talking in this video and that is because yesterday I completely lost my voice and I'm just about getting it back. Apologies in advance. Let's try the special plov. This is slightly different to the wedding plov because this uses olive oil and I think one type of meat as opposed to two. Yeah, let's give it a go. Smells incredible. That is so good. So just like Julia was saying about the Czech Plov, it doesn't taste oily at all despite it being cooked in loads of oil. The vegetables are so fresh. The fruit just bursts in your mouth giving it that sweet kick and then the meat itself is just such good quality, so fatty. The whole thing just melts in your mouth. It's so good. Oh, by the way, we've heard that plov in Uzbekistan is an unofficial word for foreplay. Just gonna have a bit of plov before we get started. I'm very scared we have three forks. And let's try the wedding plov. So they told us that back in the day if anyone had a wedding or a big celebration, they would come over and they would get plov for free. Back in the day. Let's try the wedding plov. This one is my favourite. As Matt mentioned, everything just melts in your mouth. Even the rice, the fruit, all of it. Because they use two types of carrots. The yellow ones and orange ones. So you get different kind of flavours from them as well. I adore the combination of sweet and salty. So when you get this raisin in your mouth amongst all the delicious things, it's just really refreshing and the combination itself is just beautiful. Again, it's really rich but not overpowering, which I would say the chai hana one for me, I couldn't eat a lot of it. On the other hand, this one, I could eat a lot of it and every day. But yeah, they are all delicious and I find it incredible how different they all taste. Love it. That raisin. Last but not least, before we tuck in completely, I wanted to say the chai hana plov is from a city called Andijan. The wedding plov is from Tashkent. And the special plov is actually, they say, closer to Turkish apparently. So it's more from the western half of Uzbekistan making its way from Turkey. So yeah, that's why they're all different. There's all different regional variations and there's probably even more. I can't wait to go further into Uzbekistan and try even more. Right, we're going to tuck in. Thank you.