Afghan cuisine


Afghan cuisine is largely based upon the nation's chief crops, such as wheat, maize, barley and rice. Accompanying these staples are native fruits and vegetables and dairy products such as milk, yogurt, and whey. The nation's culinary specialties reflect its ethnic and geographic diversity. Afghanistan is known for its high-quality pomegranates, grapes, and sweet, rugby-football shaped melons. The national dish of Afghanistan is the rice dish kabuli palaw.

Major foods

Types of rice dishes

Moi
Challow is served mainly with qormas.
Palaw
Cooked the same as challow, but meat and stock, qorma, herbs, or a combination are blended in before the baking process. This creates elaborate colors, flavors, and aromas from which some rice is named. Caramelized sugar is also sometimes used to give the rice a rich brown color. Examples include:
Qormah/Korma is a stew or casserole, usually served with chalau rice. It is always onion and tomato based; onions are fried, tomato is added, including a variety of fruits, spices, and vegetables, depending on the recipe. And finally the main ingredient is added, which can be meat or/and vegetables. The onion is caramelized and creates a richly colored stew. There are over 100 qormahs. Below are some examples:
Note that Afghan karahi does exist. The difference between qormah and karahi is that unlike qormah, karahi is prepared in a wok like cookware in which all ingredients are added at the same time fried and then let simmer. While qormah, oil and onion are caramelized first and then tomato and spices are added, and finally the main ingredient.

Mantu

Known as khameerbob and often eaten in the form of dumplings. These native dishes are popular, but due to the time-consuming process of creating the dough for the dumplings, they are rarely served at large gatherings such as weddings, but for more special occasions at home:
Each family or village will have its own version of mantu and ashak, which creates a wide variety of dumplings.
A local plant called gandana is cut and used as dumplings; it is boiled and fried in ghee with pudina powder added over the soup, with vinegar
In the form of noodles, pasta is also commonly found in aush, a soup with several regional variations.

Kebab

Afghan kebab is most often found in restaurants and outdoor vendor stalls. The most widely used meat is lamb. Recipes differ with every restaurant. Afghan kebab is served with naan, rarely rice, and customers have the option to sprinkle sumac or ghora, dried ground sour grapes, on their kebab. The quality of kebab is solely dependent on the quality of the meat. Pieces of fat from the sheep's tail are usually added with the lamb skewers to add extra flavor.
Other popular kebabs include the lamb chop, ribs, kofta and chicken, all of which are found in better restaurants.
Chapli kebab, a specialty of Eastern Afghanistan, is a patty made from beef mince. It is a popular barbecue meal in both Pakistan and Afghanistan. The word Chapli comes from the Pashto word Chaprikh, which means flat. It is prepared flat and round, and served with naan. The original recipe of chapli kebab dictates a half meat, half flour mixture, which renders it lighter in taste and less expensive.

Quroot

Quroot is a reconstituted dairy product. It was traditionally a by-product of butter made from sheep or goat milk. The residual buttermilk remaining after churning of the butter is soured further by keeping it at room temperature for a few days, treated with salt, and then boiled. The precipitated casein is filtered through cheesecloth, pressed to remove liquid, and shaped into balls. The product is thus a very sour cottage cheese. Quroot is hard and can be eaten raw. It is typically served with cooked Afghan dishes such as Ashak, Mantu, and Kichri Qoroot, among others.

Other Afghan food items

is a cold drink made by mixing water with yogurt and then adding fresh or dried mint. Some variations of doogh include the addition of crushed or diced cucumber chunks. It is the most widely consumed drink in Afghanistan, especially during lunchtime in summer. Doogh can be found at most Afghan grocery stores and is served in restaurants.

By region and ethnicity

Pashtun cuisine

are the largest ethnic group of Afghanistan, constituting about 42% of the country's population. A major dish in Pashtun culture is Sohbat, used in traditional gatherings and events. other major Pashtun dishes include lamb-skewered sajji and chapli kebab. Dampukht is steamed meat khaddi kebab is the Afghan shashlik, grilled on an open fire on a spit.
Pashtun cuisine is meat-heavy and is often offered with caramelized Rice. There are regional variants: for example, the dish known as “Bolani” in the north and east is often called “Borogyen” in the south and west.
Common summer beverages include Shlombeh, also known in Persian as Doogh, a drink consisting of liquid yogurt, mint, and bedreng. Sherbet is an ice sugared cold drink. Sheer yakh is a sweet ice-like product literally translating to "Cold Milk".

Hazara cuisine

The Hazara people in central Afghanistan and western Pakistan have their own food – Hazaragi cuisine. Since the Hazara people share some similarities with neighboring regional cuisines, the food is mainly influenced by Central Asian, Persian and South Asian cuisines. However, the way of cooking and culinary methods are different in some of the dishes between these neighboring cuisines.
In Hazara cuisine, the Hazara people used a large proportion of high-protein food such as meat and dairy products as well as plenty of oil when cooking. Rather than a wide selection of dishes, their meal usually consists of only one type of food.
Below are some famous dishes in Hazaragi cuisines:
AASH – A healthy food with its own taste, one of the most common foods in a Hazaragi restaurant. Aash is easily made from flour, therefore, some housewives make aash at home and sell it to retailers to earn money. As the main ingredient is flour, patients can eat it easily without any concern. It is also a feast food and served with minced meat, vegetables, and lentils at parties.
DALDA – The most favorite food for adults. People eat it with their hands. It looks like wheat when it is raw, but changes in appearance after being cooked. It is served with some boiled oil in the middle and has its own taste.
NANTAR/YAKHNI – Yahkni can be a soup of chicken, goat, cow or sheep. After putting some bread in the bowl with the soup, it becomes Nantar, meaning "bread is wet". The food can be eaten with a spoon, but it tastes better when eaten with the hands.
HALWA-E-SAMANAK – Not an ordinary food, it is not easily made as you have to be strong enough to mix all the ingredients with a spoon, but it is made as daily food for dinner or lunch. Halwa refers to holidays like Muharram or funerals.

'''Special''' occasions

Serving tea and white sugared almonds is a familiar custom during Afghan festivals. Eid-e-Qorban is celebrated at the end of the Haj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, when families and friends come visiting each other to drink a cup of tea together and share some nuts, sweets, and sugared almonds called noql.