The Journey of Azerbaijani Cuisine

Plov: A Dish Served in Three Parts

With more than 200 documented varieties, plov (pilaf) anchors the Azerbaijani table so firmly that it is popularly called the country's culinary crown. Rice, a meat-and-dried-fruit topping known as gara, and a plate of fresh herbs arrive on separate platters and are eaten side by side rather than mixed together.

A thin sheet of lavash bread is often layered at the bottom of the pot, forming a golden, crisp crust called qazmaq that is served on top of the rice or on its own. Saffron, grown domestically on the Absheron Peninsula, colours and flavours the rice and appears, by some counts, in more than fifty national dishes.

Cooking Over Open Fire

Fire runs through Azerbaijani cooking in several distinct forms. The sac, a flat or slightly domed cooking surface, produces at least four categories of dishes depending on whether food is grilled directly on it, cooked inside it, covered by it over embers, or sandwiched between two sac plates.

The tandoor, an underground clay oven, still bakes daily bread in villages and city courtyards alike, and kebabs — including sturgeon skewers served with a tart pomegranate sauce — are grilled over charcoal.

Preserving the Harvest: Pickles, Drying and Molasses

Vinegar pickles and brined vegetables fill the pantry alongside dried fruit, dried and salt-cured meat, and molasses made from grapes, mulberries or sugar beet. In drier regions such as Nakhchivan, lavash bread is baked in bulk, dried and stored for months, then briefly moistened before eating — a practical answer to a harsher climate.

The Sour Backbone: Alycha, Sumac and Pomegranate

Rich, meat-forward dishes are balanced by a consistent sour thread. Dried cherry plum, known locally as alycha, appears in soups, koftas and the meat topping of plov; sumac sits on the table alongside salt and pepper; and a pomegranate sauce accompanies grilled fish. In winter, dried fruit and saffron or turmeric often stand in for the fresh tomato used in summer cooking.

Dolma, Tea and a Regional Map

In 2017, UNESCO inscribed Azerbaijan's "Dolma making and sharing tradition, a marker of cultural identity" on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, recognition that covers both the more than thirty varieties of stuffed vegetables and leaves and the communal act of preparing them together.

Tea, served in pear-shaped armudu glasses designed to keep the last sip as hot as the first, opens nearly every meal, while regional cooking shifts from Baku's dill plov to Sheki's chestnut-and-chicken layered plov and Lankaran's walnut-stuffed fish levengi — a range shaped by Azerbaijan's long position between Anatolia, the Caucasus, Central Asia and Iran.