Besides its other remarkable features, Azerbaijan's Cuisine is known for its special attitude towards the bread. In Azerbaijan the bread means more than just a food; traditionally it symbolizes humanism and morals. Following local custom, when people just start to lay the table, first they bring the bread and place it onto the table, and when the dinner is over and they have to clean the table, first they carefully pick up every piece of the bread from the table and take it away. Traditional types of the bread (lavash and tandir-chorek) are "kings of the table" all over Azerbaijan. As an expression of the folk's respect and love towards the bread, in the city of Aghdam in Garabagh there had been organized the Bread Museum.

Lula-kebab (barbecue with forcemeat)

At the same time, the bread's "competitor" - the rice pilaf of the refined taste and graceful looking - is one of the most popular dishes at all regions of Azerbaijan, including Garabagh. This dish can be prepared with various attachments based on either meat or fish or fruit etc. Depending on assortment of these attachments to the steamed rice, you can define the type of the pilaf. Over 40 pilaf types are popular in Azerbaijan.This variety includes qovurma-pilaf (with stewed mutton), sabzi-pilaf (with meat stewed in verdure), toyuq-pilaf (with chicken), shirin-pilaf (with dried sweet fruit), sudlu-pilaf (rice cooked in milk) etc.

Rice cultivation in the country has a long history. Being produced basically in subtropical valleys, the rice traditionally was sold all over Azerbaijan. The age of the local rice trading is more than one thousand years. And that's the reason why broad usage of the rice is a typical feature for all regions of Azerbaijan.

The Garabagh Cuisine is traditionally famous with its extremely delicate and succulent mutton shish-kebabs (barbecues). A lot of people in the country consider that the sheep and rams, which feed in the perfect pastures of the Garabagh zone, are most tasty not only in Azerbaijan, but all over the world. This reputation can be trusted, as our people know their onions in shish-kebabs.

Shish-kebabs are very popular in Azerbaijan generally. While no first course is usually cooked and served for banquettes and celebrations here, they necessarily serve in sequence several kinds of shish-kebabs. Hardly can be counted how many barbeque variations you can meet in our hospitable country. They use to produce barbeque from a lamb breast, mutton fillet, force-meat, fatty tail, fish, chicken, vegetables, potatoes, nut etc. The sturgeon barbeque is traditionally served with narsharab - concentrated dressing produced from a pomegranate juice. And usually in all cases with barbeque they serve verdure assortment, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers, as well as pickling and marinades.
There is tradition to have pure spring water along with the dinner.

Sherbet

Another popular dinner drink is ayran, based on local yogurt named qatyq. And the most typical drink for finishing the dinner is sherbet. To produce sherbet they use spring water, sugar, lemon, saffron, seeds of peppermint and sweet basil. Dozens kinds of sherbet are known in Azerbaijan, while only one dozen of them are the most popular and regularly served.