Cooking pilaf in a cauldron over a fire: step-by-step instructions

A year ago, we purchased a six-liter Asian cauldron from the Ukrainian manufacturer BRIZOLL for cooking dishes over an open fire.

However, the Asian dish was actually prepared only now. The focus will be on plov.

Traditionally, we will start with a brief excursion into the history of this dish.

Plov is a dish that first appeared among the Turkic nomads of Central Asia. They engaged in livestock farming and trade. Since their closest neighbor was China, rice became a common commodity for exchange. It was only a matter of time before the Turks invented mixing this grain with meat in one cauldron ;)

However, there is another legend that says plov entered our kitchens from the Persians, and the recipe was brought back from his military campaigns by Alexander the Great himself. But we are not here for origin stories, but for the history of our culinary experience.

So, a few more words of theory. Plov consists of two parts: the base, also known as zирвак (meat, vegetables, and spices), and the grain itself – rice, bulgur, wheat groats, spelt… That is, not only rice can be used for cooking. Here, as it turns out, the situation is similar to our native Ukrainian borscht: there is no single correct and canonical recipe; all of them have the right to exist.

Stage 1: preparing the ingredients So, for the zірвак we needed:

For the spices for the zірвак, we used:

We also wanted to add cumin (zira), but we didn't manage to buy it, and we forgot to add khmeli-suneli to the zірвак. But this did not significantly affect the taste; the whole cauldron of plov was gone in half an hour ;)

We chose long-grain parboiled rice, using 500 g. As a result, all the ingredients were enough for 5 large and one medium serving of plov.

Stage 2: preparing the zірвак

We light the fire and heat the cauldron. After preliminary cooking, it was washed and greased with fat. So, it didn't take much time to prepare it. It is enough to heat it well, add water, and either wait for it to evaporate or drain it. After the walls dry from the water, oil can be added. It should be enough, but that depends on personal preference.

At the stage of cooking the zірвак, we constantly maintained a large fire under the cauldron, especially paying attention to this when adding new ingredients, but more on that in due time.

So, we added oil and waited for it to heat up. We added the meat to the cauldron and waited for the juice to evaporate.

This stage took us about 15 minutes. After that, we added the carrots, cut into sticks. We monitored the fire and periodically stirred the contents of the cauldron with a spatula.

Again, after 10-15 minutes, we added the chopped onion. We didn't cut it too finely, but into medium-sized cubes.

After that, we added salt, mixed it, and covered it with a lid for 5 minutes.

Now it's time to add spices to the zірвак. So, we pre-soaked the raisins and barberry in boiling water, let them sit for 10 minutes, and then rinsed them with cold water.

We added them to the meat with vegetables. We also added the spices (paprika, turmeric, curry, a ready-made mixture for plov, which includes dried ground garlic, onion, red pepper, bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom, coriander, and cloves).

At this stage, we no longer increase the intensity of the fire, meaning we will not throw new logs into the fire. We cover it with a lid and let it simmer for 5-7 minutes. During that time, we thoroughly rinsed the rice until the water ran clear and prepared the water. We ended up with 2.5 cups of rice, so we added 4 cups of water (we almost adhered to the 1:2 ratio).

Stage 3: adding the rice

Approximately after 40 minutes, we made the zірвак. Now it's time to add the rice to it. We carefully laid it on top of the zірвак, added 3 pinches of salt, and poured water up to the spatula. After that, we “stick” 3 heads of garlic into the rice (they do not need to be peeled, just thoroughly washed from dirt).

We cover the cauldron with a lid and set a timer for 60 minutes: in our case, that’s how long we allocated for cooking the rice. But it became soft and fluffy after just 45 minutes. At this stage, the most important thing is not to open the lid of the cauldron for at least the first 30 minutes and not to let the fire flare up (otherwise, the zірвак at the bottom of the cauldron will burn). In fact, we were already cooking the plov on the coals, but their heat was quite enough for everything to turn out well.

Stage 4: tasting

Voila, after 2 hours, our plov is ready!

From my own experience, the most “tedious” process during cooking is cutting the carrots into sticks (a lengthy mechanical task), as well as rinsing the rice. It took about 15 minutes of rinsing 500 g of rice until the water became as clear as possible.

The financial costs for such a cauldron of plov, as in the photo, amounted to no more than 300 UAH (at prices at the end of December 2023). Therefore, this is not just a delicious dish, but also economically quite accessible.

Try cooking this delicacy yourself! ;)