The 5 best things I ate in Azerbaijan

I’m not sure how to begin writing about my month in Azerbaijan. The landscapes were beautiful, the cities enchanting, the people so friendly. It was full of adventure and nothing at all like I expected it to be. So where do I start?

I’m still slightly overwhelmed trying to process it all. (Including the over 2,000 photos I took. Yikes.)

So I’ll begin where I feel is most appropriate for me, given that my most burning question when I found out I was going to Azerbaijan was, “I wonder what the cuisine is like there??”:

The food.

But instead of jumping straight into The 5 best things I ate like I usually do, this month I’m adding a little primer first.

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First off, I was in Azerbaijan for work. So most of my meals looked something like this:

And when I wasn’t eating at the hotel buffet for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I was usually eating dinner at the stadium — meaning a bottle of water and a tiny cupcake, and if I was lucky some beetroot salad or cold pizza. (But by no means is that a complaint: most sports events don’t provide media with free food at all — in London they were charging £1.05 for bottles of water. I was grateful for the free snacks.)

All I’m saying is, my understanding of Azerbaijani cuisine is limited. That said, I still managed to eat a few meals outside the hotel — and get a glimpse of Azeri culture in the process.

Second,

What is Azerbaijani cuisine?

If I had to describe Azeri food in four words, it would be: pickles, herbs, lamb, and sodium. 

Each meal would begin with a plate of ‘starters’ to be eaten with warm naan-like bread, including fresh herbs, cheeses, olives, onions, tomatoes, cucumbers, and an assortment of pickled stuffs: pickled onions, pickled cabbage, pickled olives. I even had pickled mushrooms at one restaurant.

(Funny enough, what I would call a pickle they called a white cucumber.)

Herbs are highly appreciated here; sometimes they would be brought out on an entire plate of their own. They smelled wonderful.

Then at least one of the main dishes would feature lamb. Even those that didn’t still contained large amounts of sodium, the likes of which I’d never tasted before.

I am highly loathe to complain about food. I hate to do it and can’t stand others who do. But I will admit that after a month in Azerbaijan, I was ready for a sodium break. (And this is coming from someone who has, on multiple occasions, sat down to a movie with a jar of pickles and demolished them in one sitting.)

Dinner was usually followed by tea, an important part of Azerbaijani culture and something I will definitely be writing more about in a separate post.

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Right, so now that you have an understanding (or at least understand my understanding) of Azerbaijani cuisine, we can move onto the good stuff:

The 5 best things I ate in Azerbaijan

1. Piti soup, Sheki

This. Oh my god this. By far, the best thing I ate in Azerbaijan. Piti is a soup prepared in individual earthenware pots that you ‘disassemble’ before eating. First you break apart pieces of bread into an empty bowl. Then you tilt your piti pot slowly so that the broth covers the bread; after that you let the rest of the ingredients fall on top to complete your dish — do these steps too quickly, and you’ll be splattered with hot soup.

The recipe itself is simple: mutton, chickpeas, chestnuts, and potatoes. But the end result is a hearty and flavorful soup, in fact one of the most flavorful I’ve ever had in my life — most likely owing to the large portions of fat cooked in (see those white chunks in the photo above? Not all of them are bread).

2. Badambura, Baku

Badambura (pronounced boddum-boora) is a common Azerbaijani pastry that comes in various shapes and is filled with sugar, cinnamon, and finely chopped nuts. I got my first taste at the tournament accreditation center, of all places. While waiting for my accreditation to print, I mentioned in passing that I was hungry. The center volunteers promptly took the badambura and juice boxes out of their own lunch packs and insisted I eat. I don’t know if it was the hunger or their kindness, but I never did find badambura as delicious as that first one.

3. Black tea and cherry jam, Baku

Like almost all of the meals on this list, there’s a story behind this tea that makes it memorable. But the tea itself was also fantastic, which is not surprising as it is such a huge part of Azeri daily life; I’d often see men on the streets playing board games while sipping black tea from their small curvy glasses. There’s a special way to drink it with the jam, but I’ll get to that in another post.

4. Halva, Sheki

Sheki was only a day trip, so our stop into a local candyman’s store lasted no more than five minutes. But in those few minutes I could see how popular this guy’s halva was: the tiny store was teeming with locals, all jostling for the latest batch of halva. Boxes would disappear as soon as the man could cut his candy and fill them. By the way, halva — a dessert consisting of chopped nuts sandwiched by wafer-thin fried dough and absolutely dripping with honey — is a specialty of Sheki, so I feel like we got the best of the best here.

5. Caspian fish and smoked cheese, Gabala

The salt content in these made for excellent beer snacks (just looking at this photo makes me want a beer). I didn’t catch the name of the cheese, but it was offered at every meal, even breakfast. It was smoky and tough but there was something addictive about it; every time I gnawed on a string I felt like a horse with a salt lick.

The fish weren’t as appetizing, but that might be because I first had to pull off their heads, then mind their bones as I devoured their tiny bodies.

Again, it’s the memory of this night — drinking with local Azerbaijani guys who knew no English other than “Edna!” and “Vodka!” — that puts these salty snacks on the list for me (and far outweighs the salt content I had to ingest to get through the vodka).

What’s your favorite dish here? And more importantly, who’s up for an Azeri meal?