Uzbekistan food tour: cooking classes in Khiva, Bukhara and Samarkand

In Khiva the noodles are green. The cook blends dill with water, strains it and kneads the dough on that green juice. The dough is rolled out, cut into noodles and served with a meat and vegetable sauce called vaju and a spoon of white sour-milk sauce. It is a Khorezm dish, and the easiest way to understand it is to make it yourself.

We are a tour operator in Tashkent, and food is one of the things our guests ask about most. Below is what you cook on a food tour of Uzbekistan, city by city, and which of our trips include a cooking class.

What happens at a cooking class

Uzbek food is home food. The best plov is cooked for a family lunch or a wedding, and the dishes of Khorezm or Bukhara change from one kitchen to the next. A cooking class puts you in that kitchen: you go to the market with the cook, choose the meat, herbs and rice, and then eat what you made at one table.

Plov is the centre of it. In 2016 UNESCO inscribed Uzbek palov culture and tradition on its list of intangible cultural heritage. It is cooked by men and women, at home and for big celebrations. There is a saying here that a guest cannot leave the house until plov has been served.

Khiva: green noodles and egg dumplings

Khorezm cooks differently from the rest of the country. On our food tour the morning in Khiva starts at the market, where you buy eggs, herbs, flour, spices and meat together with the cook. Then you make two dishes.

The first is shivit oshi, the green dill noodles. The second is tukhum-barak, thin dough with an egg filling, boiled like dumplings. In June 2025 tukhum-barak was officially registered in Uzbekistan as a geographical indication of Khorezm. Lunch is what you have cooked. In the evening there is Khorezm plov, called chalov, and local sweets.

If you are in Khiva on another route, ask us about an evening in the desert near Khiva. You choose two experiences out of six, and four of them are cooking classes: tandoor flatbread, shivit oshi, tukhum-barak or Khorezm plov. The price is on request.

Bukhara: green plov and the guesthouse kitchen

Bukhara has its own plov, and it is green too. Bakhsh is made with a large amount of herbs, rice and meat. On our food tour you cook it with the chef after a morning at the bazaar, where you buy spices, rice, legumes and dried fruit. The chef shows how one dish, plov, changes from city to city.

Our classic routes stop in Bukhara for a plov evening as well. On the 8-day group tour of Samarkand, Bukhara and Khiva it is a plov master class in a local guesthouse. On the 8-day private classic tour the dinner with a plov master class comes with the meal package. The tour page shows what is included.

Samarkand: the kazan, the zirvak and the lyagan

Samarkand plov is cooked in layers and is not stirred. Every plov starts with the zirvak, the base of meat, onion and carrot fried in oil in a cast-iron kazan. Rice goes on top and steams in the cauldron. In Samarkand the class goes from washing the rice and making the zirvak all the way to serving the plov on a large lyagan platter.

Before the class you buy bread at the Siab bazaar, together with halva, nuts and spices. Samarkand bread is famous across the country, and why it tastes different is in our article on Uzbek bread. For the bazaar itself, see Siab bazaar.

Groups of colleagues or friends can bake bread in the mountains. On our 4-day nature tour to Zaamin lunch is tandoor kebab, and there is a master class in kazanpatyr flatbread.

Our food tour, day by day

All three classes are part of one route, «Taste of the Road», our culinary tour of Uzbekistan. It is 8 days and private, so it starts on any day that suits you. The route runs Tashkent, Khiva, Bukhara, Samarkand and back to Tashkent:

• Day 1, Tashkent: a food walk through Chorsu bazaar with qurt, suzma, qazy, dried fruit, hot samsa and tandoor bread.
• Days 2–3, Khiva: a morning flight to Urgench, shivit oshi for lunch, then the class with tukhum-barak and shivit oshi.
• Day 4: the drive across the Kyzylkum desert to Bukhara, with tea stops on the road.
• Day 5, Bukhara: the bazaar and the bakhsh class.
• Days 6–7, Samarkand: the high-speed train, the Siab bazaar, the plov class and a farewell dinner with dishes from every region of the route.

Every city also has time for its main sights: Itchan Kala in Khiva, the Ark and the Kalyan minaret in Bukhara, Registan, Gur-e-Amir and Shah-i-Zinda in Samarkand. We book the flight, the train, the hotels and the cooks. To compare plov styles before you go, read plov in Uzbekistan.

In short

• A food tour of Uzbekistan is built around markets and cooking classes. You buy the food with the cook and eat what you made.
• Khiva: shivit oshi, the green dill noodles, and tukhum-barak, the egg dumplings of Khorezm.
• Bukhara: bakhsh, the green plov. Samarkand: layered plov from the kazan, served on a lyagan.
• All three classes are on our 8-day private tour «Taste of the Road». On classic routes you can add a plov evening in Bukhara.