Chef gave tips on cooking Baku pilaf

Unlike Uzbek pilaf, where all the ingredients are combined during the cooking process, in the Baku version, rice and meat are cooked separately. For the meat part, you can take a shoulder of lamb and put it out until soft in a broth with lots of onions and coriander. Maxim Tarusev, the chef of the Voskhod restaurant, advised this recipe to Izvestia on May 16.

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"Baku pilaf is prepared using a completely different technology and includes dried fruits (dried apricots, raisins, prunes), which make it taste sweet," the expert said. "Dried fruits will need to be well peeled and not too dried."

Cooking Baku pilaf at home will take at least three hours. Basmati rice can be cooked both in a saucepan (in a 1x1 ratio with water) and in a double boiler. Dried fruits must first be soaked in water, then dried and fried in ghee with added sugar. In the end, all the ingredients are collected on a common plate — rice is placed in the center, meat is laid out in a circle or next to it, and dried fruits and caramel onions are separately laid out.

Mint, both fresh and dried, is well suited for decorating pilaf, chef Tarusev recommends.

Read more tips on cooking with rice in the Izvestia article: