Plov in Tashkent, pilav in Istanbul, pulao in Delhi or polo in Tehran: along the old trade routes, almost every country has a rice dish with a similar-sounding name. Pilaf is one of the oldest "world dishes" there is. In this article we follow pilaf along the Silk Road – from Persian cuisine through Central Asia and India all the way to Spanish paella – and show what all these dishes have in common.
What is pilaf?#
At its heart, pilaf is rice cooked in broth or water so that it absorbs fat, spices and often other ingredients: meat, vegetables, pulses, nuts or dried fruit. Unlike risotto, nothing should turn creamy. The goal is fluffy rice in which every grain stays separate.
The English word came to us via Turkish pilav, which in turn goes back to the Persian word polo (پلو). The Wikipedia article on pilaf gives a good overview of its origins and variations.
Persian rice: polo and chelo#
Iranian cuisine knows rice in two main forms. Chelo is plain white steamed rice, served with stews and kebabs. Polo is rice cooked together with other ingredients – in other words, what other countries call pilaf.
Persian rice is typically made in two steps. First the rice is briefly par-boiled in salted water and drained. Then it steams for a long time over low heat in a covered pot. This creates the much-loved crust at the bottom, which we wrote about in detail in our article on tahdig. Almost always there is saffron too, which gives the rice its golden colour.
Well-known polo dishes include:
- Zereshk Polo – saffron rice with tart barberries and chicken,
- Morasa Polo – "jewelled rice" with nuts and dried fruit, a festive dish,
- Sabzi Polo – herb rice, which in many families belongs to the Persian New Year, Nowruz.
If you would like to discover more classics, have a look at our article on Persian food.
Plov: the pilaf of Central Asia#
Follow the Silk Road to the north-east and you reach Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. There the dish is called plov, palov or osh. It is traditionally cooked in a large cast-iron cauldron, the kazan, with lamb or beef, plenty of yellow and orange carrots, onions, cumin and sometimes chickpeas or raisins.
There, plov is much more than a meal. It is cooked for weddings, the birth of a child and funerals, often in huge quantities for the whole neighbourhood. In 2016 UNESCO added both the Uzbek palov culture and Tajik Oshi Palav to the list of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
Pilav and biryani: from Istanbul to India#
In Turkish cuisine, pilav is a side dish that goes with almost everything. Sometimes it is simply cooked with butter, sometimes with fine noodles (şehriyeli pilav), sometimes with bulgur instead of rice. Greece, the Balkans and the Caucasus have their own versions of pilaf too.
Heading south, the road leads to India and Pakistan. At the Persian-speaking courts of the Mughal era, refined rice cooking developed further. Pulao is usually mild and cooked in one pot. Biryani, on the other hand, is often layered: half-cooked rice and richly spiced meat steam together, often with saffron. You can still taste its kinship with Persian polo today.
Paella: a distant relative in Spain#
At the western end of the journey lies Valencia. Rice was brought to Spain by the Moors, who ruled large parts of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages and promoted irrigation and rice growing there. Paella as we know it, however, only appeared much later, in the 19th century, in the area around Valencia. Its name comes from the Valencian word for the flat pan.
Paella shares the basic idea of pilaf: rice cooks in broth and takes on the flavour of meat, vegetables or seafood. One thing they have in common surprises many people – saffron. Spaniards also love the slightly toasted layer at the bottom of the pan, the socarrat. It is a distant cousin of Persian tahdig.
What all pilaf dishes have in common#
However different the recipes are, they share a few things:
- Fat as protection: butter, oil or lamb fat coats the grains so they do not stick together.
- Patience while cooking: pilaf is not stirred all the time. It is left to swell and steam in peace.
- A dish for many: whether a plov cauldron, a paella pan or a platter of polo – it is always shared.
Perhaps that is exactly why this rice dish travelled so far. Traders, cooks and families carried it with them for centuries and then cooked it with whatever grew locally.
Enjoy Persian cuisine at SANTOOR#
If all this pilaf has given you an appetite for Persian cuisine, you are welcome at SANTOOR. You will find us at Florianigasse 20 in Vienna's 8th district (1080 Vienna). Our kitchen is 100% halal, and we are open daily from 12:00 to 22:00. The easiest way to book a table is our reservation page. Nooshe jan – enjoy your meal!