What to Eat in Pakistan: Typical Pakistani Food and Specialties
Pakistani cooking is built on meat, flatbreads from the clay tandoor oven and strong milky tea. It grew out of the legacy of the Mughal Empire and out of the kitchens of the regions that make up today's Pakistan - Punjabi, Sindhi, Pashtun and Baloch. It loves slow cooking, rich gravies, bone marrow and offal, and above all grilling. Beef, mutton and chicken dominate (the average Pakistani eats three times as much meat as the average Indian, according to the statistics), everything is halal, pork is nowhere to be found and alcohol only turns up rarely. The country borders Iran, Afghanistan, India and China, and you can taste every one of those neighbors on the plate.
Pakistani cooking shares a large part of its repertoire with its neighbors. The state came into being in 1947, but its dishes are centuries older. Biryani, nihari, kebabs, haleem and most of the sweets belong to the heritage of the whole of northern India and of the Mughal courts, and Muslim migrants from Delhi and Uttar Pradesh brought them to Karachi after the partition of British India. In the northwest the menu blends into Afghanistan's, and in Balochistan you can taste Persia.
Pakistan is the poorest country I have visited so far, and at the same time a country where I was often not allowed to pay for my food - I write about Pakistani hospitality separately below, it deserves it. And one more warning right at the start: Pakistani food is hot. When I went looking for a mild biryani, "mild" turned out to mean roughly what we would call seriously hot back home.
The Pakistani National Dish
The dish usually called Pakistan's national dish is nihari - a thick stew of beef (or mutton) shank that simmers for hours over a low flame until the meat falls apart, and it is eaten for breakfast. The name comes from the Arabic "nahar" (morning, day): Mughal nobles ate it after the morning prayer, laborers before a full day's work. Delhi and Lucknow still argue over who invented it. What is certain is that Muslim refugees from northern India brought it to Pakistan after 1947, opened the first nihari places in Karachi, and from there it spread across the whole country. Karachi eats the most of it to this day.
A good nihari cooks for six to eight hours, often overnight, with a full arsenal of spices and, above all, patience. It is served with naan or kulcha, scattered with fresh ginger, coriander and green chilies and finished with a squeeze of lemon; the very best comes with bone marrow (nalli nihari) or brain (maghaz nihari). Traditional places add a few kilos of leftover nihari to the next pot - this "starter" tradition is called taar, and the oldest places in Old Delhi boast an unbroken taar more than a hundred years old.
Typical Pakistani Food
The second icon is karahi, meat seared over a fierce heat in the deep pan of the same name with tomatoes, ginger, garlic and green chilies - and no onion, which sets it apart from most curries of the subcontinent. In restaurants you order it by weight, half a kilo or a kilo, and it is cooked over a huge flame right in front of you. Chicken karahi with hot naan straight out of the tandoor is probably the quickest way to understand what Pakistani cooking is about.
Grilled meat is everywhere in Pakistan. Chapli kebab from Peshawar, juicy seekh kebabs of minced beef, marinated chunks of tikka on a skewer, or a whole chargha chicken, which in Lahore is first steamed and then fried until crisp. And of course biryani: layered spiced rice with meat that Pakistan shares with the entire subcontinent (I first ate it in Mauritius). In Karachi, though, it is almost a religion, and the Sindhi version with potatoes, tomatoes and dried plums has a character of its own.
Breakfast is a chapter of its own. The weekend halwa puri - fried bread, sweet semolina halva and a chickpea curry - winter paya from trotters, or a pot of nihari: breakfast is the meal of the day here and people line up for it from first light.
And then there is street food. On top of what it inherited, Karachi added inventions of its own: bun kebab, a bun with a patty of minced meat and lentils, an egg and chutney, and katakat, offal chopped with two spatulas on a hot griddle, loud enough to hear all the way down the street. Add gol gappay, crisp hollow shells filled with flavored water, and strong milky tea from morning till night.
What to Eat in Pakistan
- Nihari. A thick beef shank stew cooked overnight with bone marrow, served at breakfast with ginger, coriander and lemon. Pakistan's national dish - it was born in Delhi or Lucknow, but its fame today comes from Karachi, where more of it is eaten than anywhere else.
- Bun kebab. A street burger from Karachi: a soft bun, a shami patty of minced meat and lentils, egg, onion and chutney. It appeared in the 1950s, three rival stories claim its exact origin, and the most famous stalls stand on Burns Road in Karachi.
- Katakat. Kidneys, heart, liver and brain chopped on a large flat pan (tawa) with two sharp spatulas - hence the "kat-a-kat" sound you hear before you see the stall. A Karachi invention, now found all over Pakistan.
- Chargha. A whole chicken marinated overnight in yogurt and spices, steamed until tender and then fried until crisp; the double treatment is what sets it apart from tandoori chicken. A Lahore specialty - though the name is Pashto and simply means chicken.
- Sajji. A whole lamb marinated in nothing but salt and roasted around a red-hot stone tandoor, traditionally with rice cooked inside the animal and kaak bread. A Balochistan classic that Pakistan shares only with Iranian Balochistan; in the cities it is made with chicken these days too.
- Chapli kebab. Flat patties of coarsely minced beef with tomatoes, coriander and spices, traditionally fried in mutton fat. It comes from Peshawar and is the flagship of Pashtun cooking, which Pakistan shares with Afghanistan; by one account the name means "flat", by another it refers to a sandal (chappal).
- Sindhi biryani. The Sindhi version of biryani with potatoes, tomatoes, yogurt and often dried plums, properly spicy. Pakistan's most widespread biryani, at home in Karachi and Hyderabad; biryani as such is a Persian and Mughal legacy of the whole subcontinent.
- Karahi. Chicken or mutton seared in the pan of the same name with tomatoes, ginger, garlic and green chilies, no onion; in a restaurant it comes by weight and is cooked before your eyes. Mutton karahi comes from what is now Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, the chicken one was made famous by Lahore - the pan itself is known across South Asia.
- Halwa puri. The Sunday breakfast: puffed fried puri, sweet semolina halva and spiced chana chickpeas. The individual parts are known across northern India, but halwa puri as a weekend ritual with a line outside the shop is Pakistani, above all Punjabi and Lahori.
- Doodh pati chai. Tea brewed straight in milk with no water and heavily sweetened - the foundation of the Pakistani day in every dhaba and every office. Northern India shares it, but nowhere is it as ever-present as here.
- Ganne ka ras. Freshly pressed sugarcane juice with lemon, mint, ginger and black salt - the official national drink of Pakistan since 2019. You come across cane presses on every corner.
- Karachi halwa. A translucent, chewy halva full of nuts, made famous in Karachi by the Chandu Halwai sweet shop, founded in 1896. After 1947 Sindhi confectioners took it to Mumbai, where it sells as "Bombay halwa" - one of the few sweets whose road led from Pakistan to India rather than the other way round.
- Sohan halwa. A hard caramel sweet with almonds, pistachios and saffron, which owes its present form and its fame to Multan (the Hafiz Sohan Halwa brand). Historians argue over its origin - the oldest documented shop selling it stood in Delhi - and it shares its name with Iranian sohan.
- Lassi. A yogurt drink, sweet or salty, in Punjab traditionally made from buffalo milk and so thick you almost eat it with a spoon. A Punjabi classic shared with the Indian side of the border; a relative of Iranian doogh and Turkish ayran.
- Kashmiri chai. A pink tea of green tea, milk, salt and baking soda, sprinkled with pistachios. In Kashmir they call it noon chai ("salty tea"), Pakistan drinks it sweet, in winter and at weddings. Shared with the whole of Kashmir, and from Pakistan it has spread far beyond its borders.
- Paya. A soup of goat or beef trotters simmered overnight to a thick, gelatinous consistency, a winter breakfast with naan, ginger and lemon. Common across the subcontinent from Delhi to Hyderabad.
- Haleem. A porridge of wheat, barley, lentils and meat cooked for hours until the meat falls apart, garnished with fried onion, ginger and lemon. An Arab-Persian legacy of the whole region; the Karachi version is more finely blended and spicier than the Indian one from Hyderabad.
- Sindhi kadhi. A Sindhi curry of roasted chickpea flour with tamarind and vegetables, served with rice - the sourness comes from tamarind, not from yogurt as in the Indian kadhi. A festive dish of Karachi and Hyderabad.
- Sai bhaji. A Sindhi spinach curry with pulses and vegetables, with meat or without, traditionally with rice. Everyday food in Sindhi households.
- Palla. Hilsa fish from the Indus, fried, stewed with onion and potatoes or grilled. A Sindhi delicacy that Karachi and Hyderabad are rightly proud of.
- Kaak. A hard Balochistan bread: the dough is wrapped around a red-hot stone and baked by the fire into a loaf that keeps for days. The bread of nomads, and the thing that goes with sajji.
- Bannu pulao. Beef slow-cooked with rice and local spices, the specialty of the town of Bannu in southern Khyber Pakhtunkhwa. A Pashtun specialty with a tradition of its own, different from Afghan kabuli pulao.
- Kabuli pulao. Rice with meat, carrots and raisins, the Afghan national dish, which Peshawar and the Pashtun regions cook as their own. Shared with Afghanistan; a relative of Central Asian plov.
- Chapshuro. A flatbread stuffed with minced meat and baked on a griddle - the "pizza" of the Hunza and Nagar valleys in the far north, the cooking of the Silk Road.
- Mamtu (mumtu). Steamed dumplings filled with meat that reached Gilgit-Baltistan along the Silk Road - the same thing as Central Asian manti and Afghan mantu.
- Seekh kebab. Minced beef or mutton with spices packed onto broad skewers and grilled over charcoal; juicy and ever-present. A Mughal legacy of the whole subcontinent (the Turkish relative: şiş köfte).
- Shami kebab. Delicate patties of boiled minced meat and split chickpeas (chana dal), ground and fried - also the base of the bun kebab. Originally from Lucknow, loved in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
- Bihari kebab. Thin strips of beef in a spicy marinade, grilled on a skewer. The name gives away its origin in the Indian state of Bihar; today it is a fixture of Karachi's grills.
- Nargisi kofta. A boiled egg wrapped in minced meat, fried and served in a sauce - a Mughal court dish. Today it is cooked in Lucknow just as much as in Karachi.
- Yakhni pulao. Rice cooked in meat stock (yakhni) with whole spices - gentler than biryani, the ingredients are not layered but cooked together. A Mughal legacy shared with the whole of South Asia.
- Aloo gosht. Mutton or beef with potatoes in a thinner gravy, home food cooked in every Pakistani family. With no claim to origin - comfort food of the whole region.
- Dum pukht. Meat slowly braised in a pot sealed with dough, for many hours if need be. A technique from the court of the nawabs in Lucknow; another theory traces it to an old Peshawar method of cooking in hot sand, and Balochistan has its own "dampukht" cooked over a low flame with almost no spices.
- Gol gappay. Crisp hollow shells filled in front of you with potato, chickpeas and spiced tamarind or mint water. The Pakistani name for pani puri, the street classic of the whole subcontinent.
- Zarda. Sweet rice dyed yellow with saffron or food coloring (in Pakistan quite happily in several colors), with sugar, cardamom, raisins and nuts; a wedding dessert. A Mughal legacy, a distant relative of Persian sholeh zard.
- Gajrela. The Punjabi name for gajar ka halwa - carrot cooked in milk with sugar, ghee and nuts into a thick pudding, a winter dessert. Shared with Indian Punjab.
- Gulab jamun. Dark fried balls of dried milk (khoya) soaked in syrup with cardamom and rose water. A Mughal dessert of the whole subcontinent, in Pakistan on the table at every celebration.
- Ras malai. Soft cheese dumplings in sweet thickened milk with pistachios. A Bengali invention (Kolkata and Comilla argue over who was first) that has made itself at home in Pakistan.
- Kheer. Rice pudding cooked slowly in milk with cardamom, often scented with kewra flower water. An ancient dessert of the whole of South Asia.
- Rooh Afza. A ruby red syrup of rose, herbs and fruit, mixed with water or milk - no Ramadan iftar goes without it. It was created in Delhi in 1906 by the pharmacist Hakim Abdul Majeed and today Hamdard makes it in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh; a drink of the same family as the one the Turks know as şerbet.
- Maghaz masala. Brain braised with spices to a creamy consistency, to eat on bread. The Mughal taste for offal shared by Pakistan, India and Bangladesh.
- Khagina. Spicy scrambled eggs with onion, tomatoes and green chilies, a breakfast the whole subcontinent knows as anda bhurji.
Typical Pakistani Drinks
Pakistan is a tea superpower, even though it grows almost no tea. It is one of the three largest tea importers in the world (its own plantations are only around Shinkiari in the north) and "chai" shapes the whole day here. The most typical is doodh pati, tea brewed straight in milk and heavily sweetened; in Peshawar and the Pashtun regions they serve green kahwa with cardamom instead, traditionally sweet and at its best in the teahouses of the Qissa Khwani bazaar. The winter and wedding specialty is the pink, traditionally salty Kashmiri tea sprinkled with pistachios. And a note for the trip home: granulated black Tapal Danedar tea from a family company in Karachi that has been running since November 1947 - I can't recommend it enough as a Pakistani food souvenir. I bring home Iranian and Turkish tea as well, but this utterly basic Pakistani one won me over completely.
The national drink is sugarcane juice (ganne ka ras). The government declared it so in January 2019 on the strength of a Twitter poll in which it took 81% of the vote and left orange juice (15%) and carrot juice (4%) far behind. Stalls with cane presses stand on every corner, and the juice is seasoned with black salt, lemon, mint and ginger.
A classic is thick Punjabi lassi, sweet or salty, in summer mango shakes and, most of all, the rose syrup Rooh Afza, which no Ramadan iftar can do without. The cult Pakistani soda is the bright green Pakola with its "ice cream soda" flavor: it was first poured on August 14, 1950, on Independence Day, it is still bottled by Mehran Bottlers in Karachi, and during Ramadan it gets mixed with iced milk into a "doodh soda".
Do not count on alcohol in Pakistan. Muslims have been banned from it since 1977, when Prime Minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto declared prohibition; you will not get it in an ordinary restaurant, and only licensed shops and hotels may sell it to non-Muslims and foreigners. Then there is Murree Brewery, a brewery and distillery based today in Rawalpindi: the British founded it in 1860 in the hill station of Murree for colonial soldiers, it is the oldest continuously operating industrial enterprise in the country, and in 2007 it became the first distillery in the Muslim world to produce a twenty-year-old malt whisky.
The Best Pakistani Food
If I had to pick three personal favorites, then the best Pakistani food for me is:
- Katakat.
- Halwa puri.
- Nihari.
How to Enjoy Pakistani Food to the Fullest
- Eat with your right hand and with bread instead of cutlery. Curry, meat and rice are eaten by hand: a piece of naan or roti is your spoon, and you pinch up the meat and the sauce with it. The left hand is not used at the table. It takes a few tries, but the food tastes different afterwards - and your hosts will appreciate the effort.
- Have breakfast like a local. Nihari, paya or halwa puri at the weekend: in Pakistan breakfast is the meal of the day and there is a line outside the best places from first light.
- Do not be afraid of street food where there is a line. Where it is busy, everything is cooked fresh - that goes for bun kebab stalls just as much as for dhabas, the simple roadside eateries that grew up along the historic Grand Trunk Road to feed truck drivers. You sit on charpai rope beds, eat out of brass bowls, and they tend to be open around the clock.
- Accept an invitation home if one comes. And it will. Much as in Iran, the best food is the home-cooked kind. It is often eaten from a cloth spread on the floor (dastarkhwan) out of shared dishes, and your host will keep adding to your plate until you say enough - and then once more.
- Go and find the food streets. In Karachi that means Burns Road, where the street classics have been made since the 1940s and where the bun kebab comes from; in Lahore it is Fort Road Food Street with a view of the Badshahi Mosque, which inherited the fame of the old Gawalmandi in 2012. In the evening people come here to eat, stroll and taste.
- Plan around Ramadan. During the fasting month most restaurants are closed during the day, and eating, drinking or smoking in public is against the law; it does not formally apply to non-Muslims, but a little consideration goes a long way. The reward is iftar - the evening breaking of the fast with dates, pakoras, samosas, chana chaat chickpeas, fruit salad and a glass of Rooh Afza.
- Take the heat seriously. "Mild" here means roughly what we would call seriously hot at home - let my Karachi biryani from the start of this piece be your warning.
Hospitality You Cannot Turn Down
Pakistan is the poorest country I have visited so far, and at the same time the country with the most hospitable people I have met on my travels. Many times I was not allowed to pay for my food at all - the invitation simply came, often from people who had little to spare themselves, and refusing made no sense. Hospitality is taken for granted here and nobody makes a show of it.
And through all of it, poverty is there everywhere you look. Outside the popular restaurants in Karachi, homeless people wait for someone inside to leave food on the plate. The custom is simple and dignified: a guest who leaves something buys a flatbread and the person waiting finishes the meal. On our last evening before the flight home, a friend and I had cash left over that we no longer needed, so we simply went from restaurant to restaurant buying these people food. What surprised me was that although they could have chosen anything, most of them reached for the cheapest thing on the menu - a plain main course with bread. It was one of the most powerful experiences of the whole trip.
How to Say Thank You for Pakistani Food
The official language is Urdu and the basic thank you is the same across the country: "shukriya" (shook-ree-yaa) - thank you, more emphatically "bahut shukriya" - thank you very much. Your cook or your host will be pleased if you add "khana bohot laziz tha" (khaa-na bo-hot la-zeez thaa) - the food was excellent, and if you really enjoyed it, a satisfied "maza aa gaya" (ma-zaa aa ga-yaa) - that was a delight will do. In a religious society, thanks that carry a blessing count for a lot too: "Allah barkat de" (al-laah bar-kat day) - may God grant abundance wishes your host plenty to share next time as well, and "jazakAllah" (ja-zaak-al-laah) - may God reward you is the one for a real kindness. Before the meal you will hear "bismillah", after it "alhamdulillah".
Regional Pakistani Cuisine and Specialties
Punjab and Lahore
The most populous province and its capital Lahore are the heart of Pakistani gastronomy: weekend halwa puri, winter paya, chargha chickens, thick lassi and, since 2012, Fort Road Food Street with a view of the Badshahi Mosque. In the countryside the mustard greens sarson ka saag with the corn flatbread makki ki roti rule - a classic that Pakistani Punjab shares with the Indian one. Punjab also gives the country basmati (the Kalar tract between the Ravi and the Chenab; Hafizabad calls itself the "city of rice"), Himalayan salt from Khewra, mangoes from around Multan and Multan's sohan halwa.
Sindh and Karachi
Karachi, the country's largest city, inherited nihari and biryani from the Muslim immigrants from Delhi and added inventions of its own: bun kebab, katakat and Karachi halwa. Sindhi cooking offers spicy Sindhi biryani, sour Sindhi kadhi with tamarind, spinach sai bhaji and palla fish from the Indus; the south of the province is also home to the Sindhri mango.
Khyber Pakhtunkhwa and Peshawar
Pashtun cooking, shared with Afghanistan: traditionally few spices, plenty of meat and fat. Chapli kebab, mutton karahi and tikka at the Namak Mandi meat market, kabuli pulao, Bannu pulao from the south of the province, and green kahwa tea in the teahouses of the Qissa Khwani bazaar.
Balochistan and Quetta
A kingdom of meat with no frills: whole sajji lambs with nothing but salt, dampukht meat over a low flame with almost no spices, mutton rosh, a whole tabaheg goat marinated in dried pomegranate and salt, fish with rice on the coast (mayg o bhat) - and kaak bread baked around a red-hot stone. The cooking of nomads, which Balochistan shares with Iranian Sistan and Balochistan.
Gilgit-Baltistan, Hunza and Azad Kashmir
The north tastes completely different - of the Silk Road and Central Asia: the meat-filled chapshuro flatbread from the Hunza and Nagar valleys, mamtu dumplings, butter tea as in Tibet, noodle soups and apricots everywhere (they make up three quarters of the fruit harvested in Gilgit-Baltistan), dried and pressed for oil from the kernels. Science has not confirmed the legends about how long the people of Hunza live, but that takes nothing away from their excellent apricot diet. Azad Kashmir and the whole north smell of pink Kashmiri tea.
Facts Worth Knowing About Pakistani Food
- Real Himalayan pink salt comes from Pakistan. It is mined at Khewra in Punjab, the second largest salt mine in the world, which yields around 350,000 tons of salt a year. Legend has it that the deposit was discovered by Alexander the Great's horses when they started licking the local stones; the mine now holds a mosque built of colored salt bricks and a narrow-gauge train from British times carries visitors around.
- The average Pakistani eats three times as much meat as the average Indian. Meat is the center of the cuisine - and at Eid al-Adha the sacrificed animal is traditionally divided into thirds: one stays with the family, the second goes to relatives and friends, the third to the poor.
- Pakistan practices mango diplomacy. It is one of the world's largest mango growers, and since 1981 the government has sent crates of the Anwar Ratol variety to heads of state and diplomats as a gesture of goodwill. The most famous variety, though, is the chaunsa from around Multan and Rahim Yar Khan.
- Pakistanis chose their national drink on Twitter. In January 2019 the government announced a poll for a national drink and sugarcane juice beat orange and carrot juice with 81% of the vote.
- Nihari is older than Pakistan. The national dish was born in Mughal Delhi or Lucknow and only reached Karachi with the Muslim migrants after 1947 - and it became a symbol of the new country straight away.
- Pakistan argues with India over basmati. The original Pakistani basmati region lies in the Kalar tract of Punjab between the Ravi and the Chenab, and Hafizabad is the "city of rice". Both countries consider the long-grain aromatic rice their heritage and their dispute over the name has reached the European Union.
- The country is one of the three largest tea importers in the world. It grows tea of its own only on the plantations around Shinkiari in the north, and yet no visit and no business meeting goes without strong doodh pati.
- During Ramadan you do not eat in public during the day - by law. The Ehtram-e-Ramazan ordinance from the days of General Zia-ul-Haq bans eating, drinking and smoking in public places during daylight; it does not formally apply to non-Muslims, but the restaurants are closed and it is only polite to go along with it.
- Karachi has a "bread bank". The Saylani Welfare Trust charity opened the Roti Bank on August 14, 2018 - a distribution point where registered families in need get two free meals a day. Sharing food with those who need it is part of everyday life here, as I saw for myself outside the restaurants of Karachi.
- The bun kebab has three birth certificates. The Karachi burger appeared in the 1950s, but nobody knows for certain who invented it: one version credits Haji Abdul Razzak, who was feeding laborers in 1953, another has it growing out of Mumbai's vada pav, and a third places it by the Khayam cinema, for the audience. Locals also call it "anday wala burger", the egg burger.
- Chicken tikka masala is not a Pakistani dish. The curry the whole world knows was born in Britain, most likely in Glasgow - though possibly in the kitchen of a Pakistani immigrant. Do not look for it on a traditional Pakistani menu.
Enjoy Pakistan and the very best Pakistani food!
