Wheat flour is used to make stiff dough for flat bread chapatti and roti. The dough is then rolled out into a thin plate and baked without fat or oil on thick cast-iron frying pans tava. Everywhere in the country from unleavened dough, kneaded with melted butter, the Pakistanis make puri - a flat cake fried in big quantity of boiling oil. When flat cake starts swelling up it is taken out of the oil. Nan is flat bread made from leavened dough and baked in ovens - tandoors.

Very popular in Pakistan are samosa - small triangular-shaped pies stuffed with potato and green and red pepper, and a typical Punjabi dish parota - a sort of fried pies stuffed with cottage cheese, cabbage, potato or carrots.

Pilao is usually served. Muslim conquerors introduced this dish into local national cuisine in the early Middle Ages. Usually pilao is cooked from mutton, but sometimes it is made from fish, chicken, vegetable, carrots, and peas. To cook the pilao the Pakistanis first fry grains of rice in melted butter or vegetable oil, and then stew the mass in meat broth or water with various spices - cinnamon, cardamom and turmeric. Meat and other components of pilao are added to the ready rice before serving.

One of the peculiar versions of Pakistani pilao is biriyani. It's main distinction lies in the fact that rice and meat or vegetables are cooked separately up to semi-readiness, then they are placed into a saucepan in layers and stewed. Before serving nuts, raisins and fried onion are added to the biriyani.

Besides rice, legumes - lentil, kidney beans and peas are very popular among Pakistani cooks. Thus dal - an original thick soup is cooked from kidney beans or peas. Usually the saucepan is half-filled with legumes, then it is filled with water to the very top, and some melted butter, powdered turmeric, red chili pepper, the greens, and some vegetables are added. 

Dal is used to dress boiled rice or it can be eaten by dunking flat bread into it. Lentil is ground into flour - besan, which is used for baking pies - pakora. The pies are stuffed with cottage cheese, slices of vegetables and fruits, bananas, pumpkin, eggplants, potato, cashew-nuts or peanuts and then are fried in plenty of boiling oil. For cooking the Pakistanis use cotton oil, peanut oil and sesame oil.

Meat dishes in Pakistan are basically cooked from mutton, seldom from beef, but obligatory with plenty of spices. Pakistanis especially like various kinds of kebabs made from mutton fried on the grill - a metal lattice above hot coal. The origin of this dish is associated with aggressive campaigns of the Tatar-Mongols, when soldiers, having spread a piece of meat on the tip a sword, roasted it above fire.

There is a great variety of different kinds of kebabs in the Pakistani cuisine. In Punjab province pieces of meat dried in the sun are roasted together with onion. In Peshawar province chapali-kebab, tasting like roast beef, is made. Meat cut into small round pieces and roasted on a skewer is called tikka-kebab. In Punjab province the favourite dishes are palak-gosht,  mutton with spinach, and Singh kebab cooked from cut meat rolled in egg dough and seasoned with spices.

Practically all dishes from rice, meat and vegetables are seasoned with karri - mixture of spices including such obligatory components as powder made of boiled and dried roots of turmeric, red chili pepper or cayenne pepper, seeds of fenugreek and coriander. Besides this jeera, or Indian caraway seeds, black pepper and garlic, ginger and saffron, can be added to the mixture. Recipes of the most refined karri can also contain cloves, cardamom, cinnamon and nutmeg.

 The favorite dessert of the Pakistanis is sweet a dish called zarda, cooked from rice with almonds, raisin and saffron and food colorings. The guest can enjoy shakar-paray - shaped from corn flour and sugar, balu-shakhi - noodles cooked in honey, khirl - roasted rice reminding pop-corn, and of course Pakistani halva. This dish is made of a mix of flour, carrots, pumpkin and lentil, fried in melted butter, which is then boiled in sweet sugar syrup. At the end of cooking ground almonds, raisin, cardamom, pistachios and saffron are added.