A simple way to prepare pilaf. How to make pilaf crumbly: a few useful tricks, plus a simple recipe for pilaf with pork

Rice

This is the main stumbling block of all cooks who have ever prepared pilaf. However, almost all of them agree that the best is devzira rice, as well as other Uzbek and Tajik varieties.

You can try cooking pilaf with other types of rice, but preferably not too starchy. And in any case, the rice must be rinsed well before adding (until the water becomes clear). This will wash away starch dust and prevent the pilaf from sticking together. Chefs also advise soaking it in cold water for an hour or more.

By the way, you can use wheat, chickpeas, corn and mung bean instead in pilaf. But this is a slightly different story.

Meat

Lamb is traditionally used for pilaf, but beef is also suitable. You can also use pork, although Muslim cooks are unlikely to forgive you for this. The option with chicken is also possible, but it has little in common with the classic Uzbek pilaf.

It is better to choose meat from adult animals: it gives the necessary rich taste.

The meat needs to be cut into fairly large pieces, approximately 5 × 5 cm or a little larger. You can fry the meat in large, non-portioned pieces and chop it just before serving. It is believed that the larger the piece, the juicier the finished meat will be.

Vegetables

There are two main vegetables in pilaf: onions and carrots. Onions can be used. It’s more difficult with carrots: in Central Asia, pilaf is often prepared with yellow carrots, but in its absence, regular orange ones will do.

The main rule is not to be shallow. The onion is cut into rings or half rings, the carrots into large cubes approximately 5 mm thick. If you finely chop vegetables and meat, you will no longer get pilaf, but rice porridge.

Oil

To prepare pilaf, either odorless vegetable oil, or animal lard (tail fat), or both types together are used. At home, the easiest way is to use refined sunflower oil.

There is no need to skimp: pilaf is a fatty dish. On average, 1 kg of rice requires about 200–250 ml of oil.

Spices

There is ample room for experimentation here. And yet we can distinguish more or less traditional seasonings:

garlic (slightly peeled and put in whole heads);
hot red pepper (put in whole pod);
cumin;
barberry;
ground black or red pepper.

You can also add thyme, coriander, suneli hops, saffron or other spices to your taste. The easiest way is to use a ready-made seasoning mixture.

Other Ingredients

In addition to the ingredients listed above, pre-soaked chickpeas and dried fruits are often added to pilaf.

Which dishes to choose

Cauldron, cauldron and cauldron again. With thick walls. In it, the meat does not stick, and the rice cooks evenly and remains crumbly. It is best to use a cast iron cauldron (especially if you are cooking pilaf over a fire), but an aluminum one will also work.

A duck pot can be a good replacement for a cauldron. But a saucepan, deep frying pan, wok and other kitchen utensils will not give the desired effect, no matter how much you might want it.

The basic principle of pilaf is this: first, zirvak is prepared (this is meat and vegetables fried in oil with spices and broth), and then rice is poured on top.

The standard proportion for pilaf is equal parts of rice, meat and carrots. The amount of onions may vary, but be at least 1-2 heads. It's the same with garlic.

Heat a cauldron and pour oil into it. It should warm up well so that later the ingredients can quickly brown.

Next, the onion or meat is fried. If you are preparing pilaf with a lot of onions, you can fry the meat first. Place it in the cauldron gradually so as not to reduce the temperature, and do not turn it over immediately - otherwise it may begin to release juice.

Fry the onion until golden brown so that the finished broth gives color to the rice.

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When the meat and onions are fried, add the carrots. It is fried for several minutes until softened.

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Then all the ingredients are poured with hot water. It should cover the meat by 1–2 cm. Garlic, red pepper, spices and other ingredients are added next. Salt everything to taste (or add a little more salt than you like: the rice will absorb it) and cook over moderate heat for at least 40 minutes until the meat is softened.

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After the zirvak is prepared, rice is added. It is better to do this with a slotted spoon to distribute the rice evenly. You can flavor it with a couple of pinches of cumin on top for flavor.

The rice is drowned in the broth (if necessary, add more hot water through a slotted spoon so that it slightly covers the dish) and simmer uncovered until the water is completely absorbed (about 20 minutes). Then the fire is turned off (if the pilaf is being cooked over a fire, then by this point the wood should just be smoldering), the cauldron is covered with a lid and the rice is left to steam for about 15–20 minutes.
After adding the rice, the cauldron is immediately closed with a lid and the contents are simmered for about half an hour on minimal heat, and then about another 10 minutes without fire.

When the heat is off, wrap the lid with a towel: it will absorb condensation and prevent it from getting into the dish.

Garlic and pepper are removed from the finished pilaf. If large pieces of meat were used for cooking, then take them out, cut them and place them on top of the mixed pilaf. If you used small pieces, you can mix the pilaf with them.

Pilaf is traditionally served on a large plate and topped with a head of garlic. This dish is best paired with fresh vegetables.

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Do you know other secrets of cooking pilaf? Share them in the comments.

Love pilaf, but there are no acquaintances who are worthy of him prepared would?

We bring to your attention the most simple recipe for delicious pilaf, which can cook at home. You just need to stock up patience and necessary ingredients.

How to cook pilaf. Cook at home

So let's move on to cooking delicious pilaf. First of all, wash, peel and cut carrots and onions.

Also cut the washed and dried meat cubes 50-60 grams each.

IN frying pan with high sides, or stewpan, pour oils, and heat it until smoking.

To the oil is saturated, And meat it turned out tastier, at this stage they throw it into the frying pan onion, fry, and throw away. We put meat and fry until light crust.

Add chopped onions and carrots. Fry over high heat for about 10 minutes.

After roasting reduce the fire, add pepper, cumin and washed and cleaned head of garlic. Garlic you just need to wash and peel, no need to divide into cloves, put entirely.

Now pour it into the frying pan boiling water so that there is meat completely covered with water, cover with a lid, and simmer over low heat for one hour.

Bye zirvak (base for pilaf, consisting of fried onions, carrots, And meat with spices) stewed, necessary rinse the rice several times until the water becomes perfectly clean.

After an hour, add rice in an even layer in the pan, without stirring with meat, and add boiling water so that the rice was covered in water by 1 cm. Cover with a lid, increase the heat and bring to a boil.

When pilaf boils, reduce the heat and cook without a lid until all the liquid is gone will be absorbed.

When the water is no longer visible, cover with a lid and preparing another 30 minutes.

Pilaf. Recipe

beef –500 g;
carrots –200 g;
onion –150 g;
rice –300 g;
garlic – 1 head;
vegetable oil – 100 g;
zira – 1 teaspoon;
dried barberry – 2 tsp;
ground black pepper –0.5 tsp.

Everything is yours delicious pilaf ready. Be careful before eating mix with a big spoon. Now feel free to invite your guests and treat them homemade pilaf with pickled cucumbers. Bon appetit!

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You can try real pilaf and appreciate its taste only in the East. This dish requires real skill and even creativity. But having the necessary set of products on hand, it’s quite possible to prepare pilaf at home. It is worth considering some special nuances.

Selection and quantity of products for pilaf

For pilaf you will need the following products:

1 kg of meat. It is advisable to take young lamb, but pork, chicken or turkey are quite suitable.
1 kg rice. Rice needs to be long and with the least amount of starch. When stewed, such rice will be crumbly and will not turn into porridge.
1 kg of onions, but not salad varieties.
1 kg of brightly colored carrots.
500 ml vegetable oil. The best option is cottonseed or rapeseed oil. If you don't have it, sunflower oil will do, but it's odorless.
Additives to taste (barberry, cumin, garlic, lemon, quince, dried apricots).
Salt and ground pepper.

Dishes for pilaf

For pilaf, buy a special copper or aluminum round pan with a heavy lid and thick walls. Additionally, prepare a clean kitchen towel, which you will have to place under the lid so that it absorbs excess moisture. Take a towel of a size so that its hanging ends can be tied around the handle of the lid.

Stages of preparing real pilaf

Prepare pilaf this way:

Wash the rice in six to seven waters and place it in a sieve one last time to drain all the water.
Cut the meat into medium-sized pieces. Before doing this, be sure to rinse it with water and dry it with paper or linen napkins.
Peel the onion and cut it into half rings.
Remove the skin from the carrots and chop it into long, rather wide strips. Do not grate carrots under any circumstances, because when simmering they will turn into mush.
Melt the butter in a saucepan and while it is heating up, fry one small onion without the husk. Put it in whole and as soon as the onion turns dark in color, remove it and throw it away. The onion will add a pleasant aroma to the oil and will indicate when the oil is well heated.
Place the meat in very hot oil and let it brown. If necessary, stir it a couple of times.
Add the onion to the fried meat and wait until it turns golden.
Add carrots to the meat and onions and let them brown too.
Pour enough boiling water into the cauldron so that there is 2 fingers above the contents.
Add salt, pepper and additives to the pan: barberry or cumin. Use the latter dry and grind a little in a mortar before doing this. Taste the broth for salt – it should be sufficiently salted.
Cover the pan with a lid and turn the heat to medium. Simmer the so-called “zirvak” (meat with vegetables, spices and hot water) for 40 minutes to 1.5 hours. The time depends on the quality of the meat: simmer softer meat less, larger tough meat longer.
Place all the rice on top of the meat and vegetables and smooth it out with a spatula. Form a very small mound in the middle, into which stick a head of garlic, a few cloves of quince, dried apricots or a small whole lemon.
Pour enough hot water over the rice so that it covers the very top of the future pilaf by 2 cm. Pour the water over the wall of the pan - this way the liquid will not damage the integrity of the formed mound.
Bring the pilaf to a boil and only then cover it with a lid. Place a towel under the lid and tie the hanging ends at the top.
Simmer the pilaf over very low heat for 40 minutes. When cooking, do not stir the dish under any circumstances.

How to serve pilaf

Serve the pilaf hot, 15-20 minutes after you turn off the stove. During this time, it will finally reach, and the rice will become very crumbly. Place the pilaf on a wide flat dish. First, use a spatula to remove all the rice and place it in a mound. Place pieces of meat on top of the rice. Also don’t forget about garlic, quince, dried apricots and lemon - they can be placed next to the rice. Fresh vegetables, cut into large pieces, will be an excellent addition to pilaf. You can also offer your guests onions pickled in vinegar. It needs to be cut into thin rings and kept for 1 hour in the marinade (0.5 cups of boiled water, 0.5 cups of vinegar, 1 tablespoon of sugar, 1 teaspoon of salt).

In the East, you will definitely be offered hot, strong tea with pilaf. Try this option too - you and your guests will surely love this combination. Tea neutralizes the fatty, rich taste of pilaf and you can eat a huge amount of it.

Pilaf is not as scary as it is painted, he believes Chef Roman Burtsev. - Let the experts love to inflate their prices by talking about how “pilaf requires special rice”, “you can’t cook pilaf without tricky spices”, etc. After such reasoning, many do not even dare to approach the cauldron.

There is no one correct recipe for pilaf. There are hundreds of them. Only Uzbek pilaf has more than a dozen varieties: Fergana, Samarkand, Bukhara, Khorezm. There is also a wedding one, with dolma, yogurt, cherries, plums. As soon as a new ingredient is added, another variety of pilaf is immediately obtained. In some countries they like a sweetish dish, in others - spicy, in others, rice is cooked separately from meat. In Russia, pilaf most often means Uzbek pilaf made from rice, carrots, onions and meat (in the original - lamb, but it can be replaced with beef, pork or chicken). In the classic recipe, equal proportions of rice, carrots and meat are taken (for 8 servings - 1 kg each), onions - a little less (200 g).

The birth of pilaf is associated with the name of Tamerlane.
Concerned about the decline in the strength of his soldiers, he turned to the mullah for help, who suggested the following way to cope with hunger in the army: “We need to take a large cast-iron cauldron. Place in it the meat of not old, but not very young lambs, selected rice, swelling with pride, which will be eaten by brave warriors, young carrots, blushing with joy, and sharp onions, stinging like the sword of a highly respected emir. All this must be cooked over a fire until the smell of the cooked dish reaches Allah, and the cook collapses in exhaustion because he has tasted the divine food.” Pilaf saved Tamerlane’s army and became the main food for the inhabitants of Central Asia. Today this dish is a decoration for both festive and everyday dastarkhan (table).

Step 1: heat the oil, fry the onion

First of all, you need to thoroughly heat the cauldron and pour a glass of refined vegetable oil into it (in the classic recipe, it is not customary to spare fat for pilaf; at least 2 glasses of oil are poured into a 5-liter cauldron and fat tail fat is also added). Then you need to wait for the oil to heat up (you can tell when it’s ready by the clicking sound when you throw in a pinch of salt), and then add the onion (200 g), cut into half rings.

Step 2: Fry the meat and carrots

When the onion is browned, add diced meat (1 kg) and carrots (1 kg). The latter is not grated, but cut into large strips about 4 cm long and 0.5 cm wide. In Uzbekistan, yellow carrots are used for pilaf (they contain less water), but in our conditions this can be ignored and you can use ordinary orange ones.

Step 3: Add salt and spices

When the meat with onions and carrots is fried, you need to pour in a little water, add 2 tablespoons of salt, add 4 whole peeled heads of garlic and Uzbek spices: 2 teaspoons of barberry, 1 teaspoon of cumin and a coffee spoon of turmeric or a pinch of saffron. If spices are not found, the result will be not Uzbek, but Kazakh pilaf (Kazakhs do not put barberries and cumin in pilaf; in their opinion, spices interrupt the true taste of meat and rice).

Step 4: Put in rice

When the meat becomes soft, remove the garlic and place rice (1 kg) in an even layer in the cauldron. Ideally, if you can buy an Uzbek variety on the market. If not, Krasnodar, Arborio, basmati or sushi rice are perfect. The main thing is to rinse the rice several times and soak it in salt water for at least 2 hours before putting it in the cauldron. The liquid will remove the starch from the grains, the salt will help prevent them from sticking together, and the pilaf will turn out crumbly and not like rice porridge.

Step 5: Cook without a lid

The rice in the cauldron must be filled with water so that there is at least 2 cm of liquid above the surface of the grains. Do not stir the contents of the cauldron and close it with a lid. Let it bubble until the rice has completely absorbed the water.

Step 6: with lid

Collect the rice in a mound, make several punctures in it with the handle of a ladle, put the previously removed heads of garlic on top, close tightly with a lid and simmer for at least half an hour over low heat. Only after this can the dish be mixed, fishing out delicious fried pieces of meat with carrots from the bottom, placing the finished pilaf on plates and sprinkling with cilantro.

Azerbaijani pilaf

Photo: Shutterstock.com

Ingredients

Meat (beef or lamb) - 500 g
Rice - 300 g
Onions - 2 pcs.
Dried cherry plum - a handful
Refined sunflower oil - 1 cup
Turmeric (or saffron) - a pinch
Greens (dill, cilantro, parsley) - a small bunch
Salt, pepper - a pinch
Lavash - 1 pc.

How to cook:

Chop the onion and fry it in vegetable oil.
Add diced meat to the pan. Salt and pepper.
Add a small amount of water (even better - broth), bring to a boil and add the washed dried cherry plum.
Simmer the meat until it becomes soft.
Separately prepare the folded rice. Peel the cereal, soak for several hours in cold water with salt, rinse in warm water, boil until half cooked in a large amount of boiling water and drain in a colander.
Heat the oil in a cauldron, put pita bread on the bottom, cover it with half-cooked rice, add water and bring the cereal to readiness. Then mix it and color it with saffron or turmeric. This part of the dish is called kaurma.
Place rice on a plate. Place the finished meat with cherry plum on top and sprinkle the pilaf with herbs.

Fish pilaf with tomatoes

Photo: Shutterstock.com

Ingredients:

Fish (fillet) - 750 g
Rice - 1 glass
Tomatoes - 5 pcs.
Onions - 2 pcs.
Garlic - 1 clove
Thyme, marjoram, salt, pepper - a pinch each
Tomato paste - 2 tbsp. spoons
Lemon for juice - quarter
Refined sunflower oil -
0.5 cups

How to cook:

Boil rice in salted water.
Separately, fry the chopped onion, crushed garlic clove and finely chopped tomatoes for 5 minutes.
Add tomato paste.
Pour oil into a cauldron (or other thick-bottomed dish), then add rice, then vegetables, salt, thyme and marjoram.
Place fish fillet cut into pieces on top, sprinkle with 2 tbsp. spoons of lemon juice and simmer until done under the lid.

Vegetarian pilaf with pumpkin and dried fruits

Photo: Shutterstock.com

Ingredients:

Rice - 3 cups
Pumpkin - 400 g
Carrots - 3 pcs.
Onions - 2 pcs.
Raisins - 100 g
Dried apricots - 200 g
Zira - a pinch
Coriander seeds - a pinch
Vegetable oil - 0.5 cups

How to cook:

Rinse the rice several times in cold water. The water should eventually become clear.
Warm up the cauldron. Then pour vegetable oil into the cauldron so that it is thoroughly calcined.
Peel the carrots and cut into strips.
Cut the pumpkin pulp into cubes.
Rinse dried fruits (raisins and dried apricots).
Place the onions and carrots in boiling oil and fry over high heat for a couple of minutes.
Add chopped pumpkin and fry for a couple more minutes.
Pour two glasses of hot water, add a little salt, cumin and coriander.
Place dried fruits in a cauldron, then add washed rice in an even layer and smooth it out. The water should cover the rice by about 1 cm.
1Close the cauldron with a lid and cook the pilaf over high heat until the water leaves the surface of the rice.
After this, fold the rice into a heap in a cauldron using a slotted spoon.
Close the lid again, reduce the heat to low and cook until the water has completely evaporated.
Serve hot.

Kazakh chicken pilaf with dried fruits and nuts

Photo: Shutterstock.com

Ingredients:

Chicken - 500 g
Carrots - 300 g
Rice - 1 glass
Refined sunflower oil - 0.5 cups
Onions - 1 pc.
Chicken broth - 0.5 cups
Raisins (light sultanas) - 60 g
Dried apricots - 100 g
Dates (or prunes) - 100 g
Walnut - 100 g
Khmeli-suneli - 2 tsp.

How to cook:

Heat the oil in a cauldron and fry the chicken cut into pieces (with bones possible).
As soon as the chicken is browned, add chopped onions, carrots and khmeli-suneli spice.
Pour in chicken broth, simmer, add a glass of rice and water up to 1.5 cm above the surface of the grains.
Simmer until the liquid is absorbed into the rice.
Close the cauldron with a lid and simmer for another 15-20 minutes.
While the pilaf is preparing, separately fry raisins, dried apricots, dates (or prunes) and walnuts in oil.
Throw the contents of the cauldron onto a large dish - the rice will be at the bottom, and the pieces of chicken with carrots and onions will be at the top. Place dried fruits on top of the finished pilaf.

Which cauldron should you choose?

Cast iron

If you create a rating of commercially available cauldrons, the classic of the genre - cast iron - will come out on top. In the East, it is believed that the older the cookware, the better - over the years of use, its pores become clogged with oil, the inner walls become covered with a layer of fat, and the food does not burn. A cast iron cauldron has excellent thermal conductivity, and pilaf in it is not just boiled and fried, but simmered.

Aluminum

Aluminum and duralumin cauldrons are in second place in popularity. The latter are made with the addition of copper, magnesium, iron and manganese and weigh slightly less than those made of “pure” metal. The main advantage of aluminum cauldrons is ease of use. In order not to drag a heavy cast-iron cauldron across the stove, Uzbek housewives choose duralumin.

Copper

There is another metal from which real oriental cauldrons are made - copper. Unlike Uzbeks, who would not exchange cast iron cookware for anything, Azerbaijanis and Iranians choose copper pots. They believe that only in such a container can perfect pilaf be obtained.

Non-stick

Today in stores you can find new types of cauldrons - coated with enamel, made of stainless steel and having a non-stick coating. As Central Asian chefs say, this is just an imitation of an oriental cauldron. Woks and French fryers don't quite work either. If you are looking for a replacement cauldron, then it is better to stop at the usual duckling or goose pan - they come in cast iron and aluminum and have thick walls.

It is good and joyful to gather with friends and family at a common table. Chat, laugh, talk to your heart's content with people near and dear to your heart. And while enjoying pleasant conversations, you just need to treat yourself to delicious homemade dishes.

But when expecting guests, you always have to cook a lot. Admit it, it often happens like this: you stand all day at a hot stove, conjuring over hot food, making complex sandwiches and canapés, cutting a bunch of different salads, and as a result, by the time of the holiday you no longer have any strength to smile and play the role of a hospitable hostess. Sound familiar?

But when planning to invite guests, it is not at all necessary to plan many different dishes. Sometimes it is better to serve only one dish on the table, but such that all your loved ones will gasp with delight after trying it, and in the end they will be full, satisfied and happy. The well-known pilaf is exactly such a signature dish. One is enough for a full-fledged holiday.

Therefore, on the next warm and sunny day, call everyone to the dacha. Stock up on rice, meat, patience and a good mood in advance. We will carefully and thoughtfully conjure up a dish that will definitely delight your guests.

The most correct recipe is the classic one with lamb. And there are many subtleties and tricks here. So let's get started:

How to cook real Uzbek pilaf

What do we know about real pilaf? Perhaps everyone knows only that cooking it is an art that requires considerable skill, training and experience. However, like other complex dishes, it has its own secrets and subtleties of preparation, which ensure the transformation of rice, meat and vegetables into a delicious and unique dish.

First of all, check if you have the necessary utensils. Today it is no longer a secret to anyone that it is cooked in a cauldron - a pot with thick walls. The cauldron can be either cast iron or thick aluminum. The main thing is to buy a container with a larger volume, you won’t go wrong. Just don't take the ducklings. The cooking utensil must be round and have a convex bottom.

Now let's talk about the necessary products:

Prepare about half a kilo of lamb. Yes, traditional Uzbek pilaf is prepared only from it. Lamb should be fatty, so when buying at the market, take a lamb ham. Although the shoulder blade is also suitable, this part of the meat is leaner.

Instead of lamb, you can take beef or pork, but this will no longer be a classic option.

Now we need half a kilo of rice. Naturally, long-grain, the higher the grade, the better.
Half a kilo of onions
Half a kilo of carrots
3-4 cloves of garlic
Ground spices. You will also need a lot of them, about 5 teaspoons. This is a mixture of ground black pepper, paprika, and cumin. You can also take barberry.
Fat for frying. It should be noted here that for the classic dish, only fat tail - lamb fat - is used. But since this product is a rare guest in our kitchen, we will replace it with sunflower oil. You will need a lot of oil - at least a glass. If you are still determined to get fat tail, then you will need much less of it - 70-80 grams.

If you want to enhance the bright and unique taste of pilaf, be sure to add cumin. It perfectly emphasizes the aroma of lamb, and in its absence even imitates its taste (so you can use a trick and take beef instead of lamb, but be sure to use cumin).

And a few more words about rice. We only need long grain, ideally the Jasmine or Basmati varieties. Round is suitable exclusively for porridges, casseroles and sushi. It must be rinsed very well with cold water, it should become clean and transparent. Usually you have to change the water 7-8 times. I wrote all the secrets of preparing fluffy rice in a previous article, be sure to read it.

Be sure to try raw carrots before cooking - we only need sweet ones; if they are bitter, they will ruin the taste of the whole dish.

Step-by-step cooking recipe:

There are 3 key stages of cooking that you need to focus on and these stages must be followed according to all the rules.

Prepare butter or tail fat

At the first stage, we will begin to heat the fat. Yes, such a seemingly banal action must be performed very precisely. This is the foundation for preparing proper pilaf.

Place the cauldron on the stove. The first step is to warm it up properly, so don't rush it.

Our cauldron is hot enough. Pour oil into it, making sure to pour it along the sides of the pot.

Attention: now the fire under the cookware should be low! It is important here that the oil heats up well, but under no circumstances boils.

Remember an important point: if the oil is overheated, the products that we then put in it will be stewed. And our goal is to ensure that the meat, onions and carrots are fried.

So, heat the oil over low heat. Don't go anywhere, watch carefully. When the oil begins to crackle and emit a whitish smoke, it’s time to move on to the second stage.

For those who decide to cook according to all the rules on fat tail (it must first be cut into pieces), the recommendations remain the same. The main thing is that when the fat tail is overheated and white smoke starts to appear, immediately remove the cracklings.

Preparing zirvak for pilaf

The second stage of preparation includes the preparation of zirvak. What is zirvak? This is a special “pillow” of fried meat, onions and carrots, on which rice will subsequently be cooked. Zirvak must also be correct.

So, cut the lamb into equal pieces of any size, the main thing is not too small.

Now increase the heat under the cauldron to quite high. Place the lamb in the bottom of the pot. Let it fry until light brown.

Meanwhile, prepare the vegetables.

Be sure to dry the peeled onion with a towel so that not a drop of moisture remains on it! Cut into half rings.

Add the onions to the meat and let them fry.

You will have to work hard with carrots - they should be cut into long and neat pieces. Not thick, about 0.3 cm. You cannot use a coarse grater, otherwise the carrots will release too much juice and will be stewed instead of frying.

Meanwhile, our onion has acquired a slightly golden color, so we’ll add carrots to the cauldron. Stir gently and continue cooking for another 5 minutes.

Salt our zirvak thoroughly; it should even be slightly salted. Later, when we put rice in the cauldron, it will no longer be possible to add salt to the dish, so try to calculate everything correctly.

Add prepared spices.

The second stage of preparing pilaf has come to an end.

The third stage - preparing fluffy rice

Now we have smoothly moved on to the third stage of preparation - cooking the rice. The peculiarity of this stage is that the rice will be steamed. In pilaf, the rice must be crumbly, and steam serves this purpose. How is rice cooked over steam here? It’s very simple: rice is cooked over a zirvak. It is a correctly made “cushion” for rice – zirvak – that ensures the crispness of the future dish.

So, very carefully place the washed rice on top of the zirvak. Gently smooth the top with a spoon. Proceed with caution, do not mix rice with zirvak under any circumstances.

By now you should already have a boiling kettle ready.

The following steps will require extreme caution and concentration on your part.

Place a flat saucer on top of the rice. Now very carefully pour boiling water onto the saucer. When the water covers the rice by one to one and a half centimeters, stop. Instead of a saucer, water can be poured onto a wooden spatula or spoon.

Very, very carefully remove the saucer from the cauldron, taking care not to touch or disturb the layer of rice in any way.

Why are such complex actions necessary? Our task is to keep all layers of pilaf unchanged and not mixed, and the rice well compacted. If you pour water without the help of a saucer, there is a high risk that it will blur the rice a little and the tightness of the layers will be broken, and then the dish will not turn out as intended.

Continue cooking over fairly high heat. Do not cover with a lid! Do not interfere with anything under any circumstances!

When the water has completely boiled away and the rice visually looks ready, arm yourself with a spoon with a long thin handle. Now very carefully, using the handle of a spoon, poke several holes from the surface of the rice to the very bottom through all the layers. Carefully pour hot water into these holes. You don't need to pour a lot, just a little. Carefully insert garlic cloves, cut in half lengthwise, on top.

Close the cauldron with a lid and immediately reduce the heat to the lowest possible setting. Let the pilaf simmer for about 20 minutes. After turning off the heat, do not open the lid for another 10-15 minutes, the dish should be completely cooked.

Tip: the lid under which the rice is cooked at the final stage should be very tight, literally without the slightest gap. If the lid of your casserole does not cover it so well, replace it with a suitable flat dish.

Now your real Uzbek pilaf is ready! We guarantee that if you were not lazy and carefully followed all the recommendations, your guests will be completely delighted with it.

Place the finished dish from the cauldron on a tray or large plate in layers arranged in the reverse order from how they were prepared: first - rice, and on top of it is zirvak, topped with pieces of juicy, crispy meat.

Well, be sure to serve it with fresh pita bread, cucumber and tomato salad and hot green tea.

I hope my recipe will help you please your family and friends. Write, I will be glad to receive feedback and comments!