Guides · 3 min read ·
Learning Pakistani Cooking: Where to Start
A beginner's roadmap to Pakistani cooking: the five techniques to learn first, ten recipes to cook in order, and the common mistakes that make homemade desi food taste flat.
Pakistani food can look intimidating from the outside: long ingredient lists, unfamiliar words and dishes that take hours. But underneath, it’s built on a small number of techniques used again and again. Learn those, cook a sensible sequence of recipes, and within a couple of months you’ll be making food that tastes like it came from a Pakistani home.
Five techniques to learn first
1. Browning onions. Most curries start here, and the colour of the onions decides the colour and depth of the gravy. See our onion guide.
2. Bhunai. Frying the masala until the oil separates. It’s the most important technique in Pakistani cooking, and skipping it is the main reason homemade curries taste raw. Read our bhunai guide.
3. The tarka. Sizzling spices in hot fat and pouring them over daal. Our tarka guide explains it.
4. Cooking rice. Separate, fluffy basmati is the basis of pulao and biryani. See how to cook basmati.
5. Making roti. Not essential at first (you can buy it), but a skill worth building. Our soft roti guide covers the common problems.
Ten recipes, in order
Each of these builds on the one before it.
- Masoor daal: simple boiling and a tarka.
- Aloo gobi: a dry sabzi cooked in its own steam.
- Chana masala: your first real bhunai.
- Chicken salan: onions, bhunai and a gravy.
- Chicken karahi: high heat and tomatoes.
- Matar pulao: rice by absorption.
- Roti: dough and the tawa.
- Aloo gosht: slow-cooked meat.
- Kheer: patience with milk.
- Chicken biryani: everything together.
Mistakes almost every beginner makes
- Rushing the onions and masala. The single most common problem. Give them time.
- Too little salt. Desi food needs proper seasoning to taste right. Taste and adjust at the end.
- Adding water too early. Water stops the frying. Only add it once the oil has separated.
- Using old spices. Stale chili and coriander taste of nothing. Buy small packets and replace them.
- Burning the garlic in the tarka. Take the pan off the heat as soon as it’s golden.
- Stirring rice. Once the water has been absorbed, leave it alone.
How to taste like a desi cook
Pakistani home cooks rarely measure precisely; they cook by tasting. Get into the habit of tasting at three points: after the bhunai (is the masala cooked, is the salt right?), halfway through simmering, and before serving. Adjust salt, heat and tang (lemon or tomato) at the end. Over time you’ll develop the instinct that makes recipes your own.
Learn the vocabulary
Many recipe instructions use Urdu cooking words. Our glossary explains them, and every recipe on this site has a small info button next to any term that might be unfamiliar.
Be patient with yourself
Your first karahi won’t taste like your favourite dhaba’s, and your first roti won’t be round. That’s normal. Cook the same few dishes several times, notice what changes, and improvement comes quickly. Most good desi cooks learned exactly this way: by watching, tasting and cooking the same food again and again.
