Food & culture · 3 min read ·
Pakistani Winter Food: Saag, Gajar Halwa, Fish and Soup
What Pakistan eats when the weather turns cold: sarson ka saag, gajar halwa, Lahori fish, nihari and paye, chicken corn soup, Kashmiri chai and dry fruits. A guide to the winter table.
Pakistani winters are short in the south and properly cold in the north, but everywhere they bring a change in the kitchen. Markets fill with mustard greens, carrots, cauliflower and peas; dry fruit sellers set up on every corner; and the food turns richer, warmer and slower. For many Pakistanis, winter is the best eating season of the year.
Sarson ka saag and makki ki roti
The defining winter meal of Punjab is sarson ka saag: mustard greens, often with spinach and bathua, cooked for hours with maize flour, mashed with a wooden and finished with ghee and garlic. It’s eaten with makki ki roti, a coarse maize-flour flatbread, a dollop of white butter and a glass of lassi or a few slices of raw onion. It’s heavy, earthy and exactly right on a cold day.
Gajar halwa
The red winter carrots of Punjab are sweeter and juicier than the orange ones available year-round, and they’re made into gajar halwa, grated carrots slow-cooked in milk until thick, then fried in ghee with sugar and nuts. Families make it in big batches and eat it warm for days.
Fish season
Fish is mostly a winter food in Pakistan. As the temperature drops, fish shops across Punjab begin frying spicy, -scented Lahori fish, and many families make fish tikka or fish curry at home. River fish like rahu and singhara are at their best in the cold months.
Soup and slow-cooked meat
Cold evenings bring soup stalls: chicken corn soup and hot and sour soup sold by the bowl with chili vinegar. At home, rich slow-cooked dishes come back into rotation: nihari, paye, haleem and yakhni, the kind of food that takes hours and warms the house while it cooks.
Winter vegetables
Winter is the season for cauliflower, peas, carrots, turnips and fresh fenugreek. This is when aloo gobi, shalgam gosht, aloo methi and mix sabzi are at their cheapest and best.
Dry fruits and winter sweets
Winter evenings in Pakistan come with a bowl of dry fruits: roasted peanuts in their shells, almonds, walnuts, raisins and, for those who can afford them, chilgoza (pine nuts) from the northern forests. Sesame and jaggery sweets like gajak and rewri appear in bakeries, and pinni and panjiri, rich mixtures of flour, ghee, nuts and sugar, are made at home, traditionally believed to keep people warm.
Winter drinks
Kashmiri chai, pink and topped with nuts, is a winter special at weddings and gatherings. Masala chai with extra ginger and haldi doodh are the household remedies for colds, and gur wali chai is popular in rural Punjab. In the north and in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, green qehwa follows every meal.
A winter weekend menu
If you want to cook a full winter meal, here’s a classic Punjabi spread: sarson ka saag with makki ki roti and white butter for lunch, a pot of chicken corn soup for the evening, and gajar halwa for dessert, with a bowl of peanuts and a cup of chai to finish. It takes planning, since saag needs hours, but it’s the taste of a Pakistani winter.
