Kazan

A wide, rounded iron pot: pilaf and festival stews cooked over an open fire.

Also called qazan, kazan pot · From Central Asia and the Turkish kitchen

A wide iron kazan of pilaf over coals with a long slotted spoon.

The journey

A kazan is older than the nation-states that still use the word. Rounded bottom, two handles or a bail, set over a hole of fire. Uzbek, Turkish, and Eastern European festival kitchens cook pilaf and plov in it so every grain meets fat and steam.

A Dutch oven on a stove can hint at it. The kazan wants a fire you can walk around.

Bread wheat — the grain a kazan was shaped to turn into festival pilaf. — Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1887) · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Render fat or brown meat first. Add rice only when the stock is at a boil. Do not stir the finished pilaf; steam it under a cloth.

Turkish and Eastern European pages in the series still name this pot when the meal is for a crowd.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

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