Cooking classes

Over the centuries, the trade of spices and other food products along the Silk Roads changed the region's cuisines, introducing new ingredients and cooking techniques that were blended with traditional styles. Although each part of Central Asia still has its own distinct food, you'll also find a rich and full variety of dishes to taste as you travel along the old trading trails.

One of the best ways to learn more about the local cuisine is to take a cooking class, where you'll be introduced to the ingredients, shown the different techniques, and then get to taste it all. Across the whole World Heritage Property, there is a range of cooking classes that focus on specific dishes or cover a whole meal.

From the big cities to small villages, you'll be able to join locals in their kitchens to see dishes prepared and learn how to do it yourself. A typical cooking class might start with a visit to the neighbourhood market to buy ingredients and then head back to the house to meet the family. Some of the food you'll learn to make includes the popular Uzbek rice dish known as plov or osh and the local bread called non, which is baked in a traditional outdoor oven called a tandoor.

Each time you take a cooking class, you'll learn something a bit different – partly because every family has their own way of making each dish (it's said there are thousands of ways to make plov, for instance). Some other popular dishes you might find yourself learning about at cooking schools are kazan kebab (fried meat and potatoes), gilmindi (a type of pancake), and samsa/sambusa (pastry with meat cooked in a tandoor), as well as plenty of delicious fresh salads.