Fourteen Afghan dishes everyone should know

Rice

Kabuli palaw. The national dish. Rice cooked in meat stock until each grain is separate, with lamb or beef hidden underneath and fried carrots, raisins and almonds or pistachios on top. Every family has its own way, and every wedding is judged by it.

Photo: Ahmad Redai Hashmi

Challow and qorma. Plain white rice, long and fluffy, served with a qorma: a stew built on slowly browned onions and tomato, with meat, beans, spinach or vegetables.

Kichiri. Soft rice cooked with mung beans, eaten in winter, especially in Herat and the north, with yogurt or landi, salted dried meat.

Dumplings and bread

Mantu. Steamed dumplings of minced beef or lamb and onion, topped with yogurt or qurut and a spoon of tomato and lentil sauce.

Ashak. Thin dumplings filled with leeks or chives, served under garlic and mint qurut, often with a meat sauce.

Bolani. Thin bread filled with potato, leek or pumpkin and fried until crisp. Sold fresh on the street and made at home for guests.

Photo: Miansari66 · CC0

Meat

Kebab. Lamb tikka, chopan kebab on long skewers over charcoal, and in the east chapli kebab, a flat spiced patty fried in fat, the pride of Jalalabad.

Karahi. Meat cooked fast in a wok-shaped pan with tomato and green chilli, the Shinwari way, in its own fat.

Chainaki. Lamb, split peas and onion slow-cooked in a small clay teapot. Kabul's old city still makes it.

Shorwa. A clear soup of meat and vegetables. Bread is torn into the bowl and the soup is poured over it.

Sweet things

Sheer yakh. Ice cream churned by hand in a metal pail set in ice, with cardamom and rosewater, topped with pistachios.

Firni. A soft milk pudding with cardamom and rosewater, set in small bowls.

Mahi wa jalebi. Fried fish with jalebi, the syrup-soaked spirals, eaten in winter and in the days before Nowruz.

Haft mewa and samanak. At Nowruz, families soak seven dried fruits and nuts, among them raisins, apricots, pistachios, walnuts, almonds and senjed, in water until they make their own syrup. Women sit up the night before stirring samanak, a sweet pudding made from sprouted wheat.

At the table

Food comes to the floor on a dastarkhan and is shared from common plates with fresh bread, eaten with the right hand. Tea, green or black, comes before, during and after. The guest is served first and served most.

Photo: Syed F Hashemi

Where to eat them: the most famous restaurants in Kabul and famous food across Afghanistan.