Beef
Chapli Kebab
A wide, flat minced-beef patty from Peshawar, seasoned with crushed coriander and dried pomegranate seeds and fried until crisp at the edges.
FROM TAWA TO TANDOOR
Pakistani street food
Market breakfasts, charcoal grills, fried snacks and the people who keep cities fed after dark — 10 recipes, each written for a home kitchen.
Pakistani street cooking is defined less by a secret ingredient than by speed and by where it happens. A karahi burner has to be hot enough to cook in minutes, because the customer is waiting and because charcoal and a flat tawa cannot do anything slowly. Almost everything on this page is assembled in one vessel, cooked in one sitting, and eaten straight away — which is also why so many of these dishes fail when they are made a day ahead.
The other thing these recipes share is restraint in the number of components. A chaat plate is assembled from four or five separately prepared things, and the point is the contrast between them: cold and sour against hot and crisp, sev against pomegranate, tamarind against yoghurt. Each of those is below with the specific detail that makes it work at home, including where it is classically eaten.
If you are cooking these for the first time, start with one that is mostly assembly rather than technique — Dahi Puri, Halwa Puri or Paratha — and move to the grill once the timings are familiar. The marinade guide covers the step that most often decides whether grilled kebab works at home.
Vegetarian
Dahi Puri
Crisp, hollow puri shells cracked open and filled with potato and chickpeas, then cool sweet yoghurt, chutneys and sev.
Drinks
Falooda
Rose syrup, soaked basil seeds and soft vermicelli layered with chilled milk and topped with kulfi or ice cream.
Vegetarian
Halwa Puri
The classic weekend breakfast: puffed fried puri with a spicy chickpea curry and sweet semolina halwa.
Vegetarian
Pani Puri
Golgappay: hollow shells filled with potato and chickpeas, then dipped in chilled, sour, mint-and-cumin water and eaten in one bite.
Bread
Paratha
A layered wholewheat flatbread, rolled and folded with ghee until flaky — an everyday breakfast that needs no tandoor.
Beef
Seekh Kebab
Minced beef or mutton shaped onto skewers, seasoned and grilled or pan-seared until charred outside and juicy inside.
Beef
Shami Kebab
Soft, spiced patties of beef and chana dal cooked together until dry, ground smooth, then shallow-fried in egg until golden.
Vegetarian
Spinach Pakora
Chopped spinach and onion in a thick, spiced gram-flour batter, fried in spoonfuls until crisp and eaten straight away.
Vegetarian
Vegetable Samosa
A firm, flaky pastry made with plenty of fat, wrapped around a spiced potato and pea filling and fried slowly until crisp.
Not everything here is a snack
A plate of Shami Kebab or Chapli Kebab is dinner, not a snack, and the grilled meat dishes need a different approach from the fried ones: high heat, little movement, and a marinade with enough time to work. For the cooking and storage side of serving these alongside other dishes, see how to store and reheat Pakistani food, and for the long-cooked breakfasts that street grills are built around, see how to use a pressure cooker.