Kazan (cookware)

A kazan or qazan[1] is a type of large cooking pot used throughout Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Turkey,[2] and the Balkan Peninsula, roughly equivalent to a cauldron, boiler, or Dutch oven.

Sometimes metal frames (a tripod called sajayaq)[1] are made, or alternatively (especially for large kazan), a hole may be dug in the ground which will hold the kazan and provide enough space underneath to keep a fire under it—in this case, an access hole is built in the side to allow the fire to be tended, and to let in air.

The origin of the word kazan can be ultimately traced back to Old Turkic verb kaz-, meaning "gouge, carve, hollow out" and present participle suffix of +(g)An.

Oldest written record of the word in any Turkic language is dated back to Mahmud al-Kashgari's 1073 work Dīwān Lughāt al-Turk.

[1] The Scythians and other Iranian peoples inhabitants of the western steppes before the Turkic migrations, used different cooking utensils.