We love strolling around local markets. The views, sounds, and smells are always amazing. I let my body absorb the vibe and the feeling is just great. Markets are rarely boring, but the local markets in Uzbekistan were exceptionally amazing. The ambience is vibrant, and they perfectly showcase the richness of the local cuisine – fresh and quality vegetables, a great variety of meats and dairy products, an extensive selection of spices and dried fruits, etc. The 3 cities where we enjoyed the markets most were Bukhara, Tashkent, and Nukus. I’d strongly recommend stopping off at the local market if you visit one of those cities in Uzbekistan.
Section of meat, meat, meat and cheese!
At every market in Uzbekistan, two types of meat caught our attention. One was lamb, which is a key ingredient in many signature Uzbek dishes such as Prov and Shashlik. In addition, there is always mutton suet besides the main meat. The huge scary fat block is THE ingredient that makes Prov so delicious!
The second type, which is quite characteristic of this region, is horse meat. As Japanese, we eat horse meat occasionally, which many of our non-Japanese friends say is crazy. I would just like to point out to them that the Japanese are not only ones who eat it! Nomadic horse people lived with horses and it’s still the same today including dietary life. While Japanese eat horse meat raw as sashimi, Uzbek people mainly eat it braised or made into sausages.
Across the country, a butcher is a male’s role. It’s common that these guys talking about a lot of funny and random things, but when there’s a camera pointing at them, then they will turn and look cool:), and they’re indeed good-looking!
An interesting dairy product in this region is dried cheese. People eat it as a snack. It’s very hard and extremely salty! I was unable to finish even one piece…
Vegetable and fruit sections are the most colorful
The vegetable and fruit section Uzbekistan are very colorful. There are orange or yellow carrots and all of the green vegetables are fresh and vivid in different shades of green.
The green vegetables especially are amazing in Uzbekistan – fresh and high quality, with a wide variety. A popular herb here is dill, which is served with every meal and people eat it as a main salad ingredient. As Japanese, we are not accustomed to eating bunches of fresh dill, but this trip definitely changed the habit of ours!
Because of the rich variety and quality of vegetables, combined with the historic Korean influence, the pickles/Kimch section is also one of the important sections in Uzbekistan.
So many types of Naan. You won’t be able to try them all, seriously
Naan is one of the two main staples for Uzbek people (another is rice). Your guide is likely to talk about it endlessly from dietary, cultural, geographic, and all other standpoints; you’ll certainly find many types of naans across both the markets and the country as a whole. In general, it’s like a huge bagel, round in shape and pressed down in the middle. The hardness and stickiness vary across regions. The most famous and popular naan in Uzbekistan is the Samarkand naan, which is very heavy and has a beautiful shiny surface.
Almost every market has a section where naan is baked in a traditional oven, filling the space with the enticing smell of fresh-baked naan.
You’ll also find many other types of bread in the markets.
Preservative foods section
Every market has a huge section for dried fruits. At every market, we bought a small portion of dried fruits to eat as snacks during the trip!
Our favorite during the trip was apricot seeds, which are completely dried and lightly salted.
The region also produces high-quality honey. It’s totally organic and has a very pure taste. We were persuaded to buy some every time a shop owner gave us a sample to taste. By the end of the trip, we had 2 kg of honey in total!
Next, we come to the spice section. Aside from all of the types of spices that we know about in general, there’s always one we’ve never seen before and have little idea how to use/eat. Here are some of them – mixed dried flowers and mineral-rich stones.
Lastly, this is what we found in the non-food section. Can you guess what these are? They are beds for newborn babies. Do you see the hole in the bed? It’s designed to effectively catch babies’ pee and poo!
And… the items below are for the same purpose, for baby girls and boys, respectively. Can you tell how they are used? Well, even after several guides had explained how they are used to collect babies’ pee and poo, we still had little idea about how they are actually used in practice. But yes, as always, a market is a wonderland where you will find different things that don’t exist in our daily life!
