Ad

  • 1 kg moderately fat lamb, shoulder or ribs
  • 1 kg medium grain rice (paella type)
  • 200-250 ml vegetable frying oil
  • 1 kg carrot (preferably not young)
  • 2-3 medium size onions
  • 1-1.5 tbsp cumin
  • 2-3 whole heads of garlic, the younger the better (optional)
  • 1-2 long hot chillies (optional)
  • salt to taste
  • 5 liter heavy cast-iron cattle (dutch oven) or bigger, preferably round-bottomed
    Ad

    Method

    • step 1

      Wash the rice under the tap until clear, cover with cold water and let it soaks for a while.
    • step 2

      Cut the meat with bones into match-box pieces.
    • step 3

      Cut the carrots into 0.5x0.5 cm thick sticks.
    • step 4

      Slice onions into thin rings or half-rings.
    • step 5

      Clean heads of garlic from the remains of roots and dirt.
    • step 6

      Heat oil in the cattle or dutch oven on a very high flame, deep-fry meat until golden-brown, in 3-4 batches. Fry the onions until golden, add meat to the cattle, stir well to prevent onion from burning. Add carrot, stir from time to time, until it starts to wilt and browns a little (15-20 min). Add 2/3 of the cumin - rub it in your palms a little to release flavor, stir gentliy to keep carrot from broking.
    • step 7

      Lower gas to moderate, pour hot water just to cover all the goods, add salt and let it simmer for 40 min to 1.5 hours until almost all water evaporate and meat became tender and juicy. Do not stir.
    • step 8

      Turn gas to max.
    • step 9

      Drain rice well, place it on top the meat and vegs in one layer, stick the garlic and whole chillies in it, and carefully pour boiling water over it (place a spoon or ladle on top of the rice to keep the rice layer from washaway). Cover the rice with about 2 cm of water, let it boil. Add salt to make the water a bit over-salted. When water will go down the rice, reduce the gas a bit, keeping it boils rapidly. Check when it will evaporate and absorb into rice completely - rice should remain rather al dente. Make a holes in the rice to the bottom of a vessel to check the water level.
    • step 10

      Reduce gas to absolute min, cover tightly with the lid and let it steam 20 minutes. Turn of the heat, remove the garlic and chillies on the separate plate. Carefully mix rice with meat and carrots, if the rice tastes a bit blind add some salt, mix and let it stand for 5 minutes. Pile the plov on a big warmed plate and serve with garlic, chilies and plain thinly sliced tomato-sweet onions-chili-salt salad.
    Ad

    Comments, questions and tips (10)

    Rate this recipe

    What is your star rating out of 5?

    Choose the type of message you'd like to post

    Choose the type of message you'd like to post

    Overall rating

    A star rating of 4.7 out of 5.18 ratings

    tmin5226726

    question

    Where is the recipe?

    hannahbyrne2011QVCnkk5R

    Delicious recipe. Made it twice now following as written and has come out yum. Thankyou for sharing

    scubabudgiel8u_F0dV

    I’m aching to edit this for syntax and spelling errors. My niece is Uzbek and I’ve had plov loads of times, adore it, and this recipe matches hers in almost every respect. But the English in this needs fixing!

    PaJac

    It's fine, we can understand it, and in fact the mistakes attracted me to the recipe as I felt I was getting a genuine recipe which is what I wanted instead of a Westernised version. And the result was just as I remember from years back. Delicious and moreish!

    Eltaj

    This article is full of orthographical and grammatical mistakes. BBC, make sure you properly check these articles before posting. Otherwise, useful recipe.

    bishopphil

    I encourage you not to be so small minded and nitpicky! English may not be the author's native language, and yet the recipe remains easy to follow.

    jules_douPdlkmqLa

    I followed the receipt exactly step by step....when I added the rice and was waiting for the water to evaporate everything at the buttom burned completely;(

    Ad
    Ad
    Ad