Hunza Traditional Food: Dishes You Should Try

Hunza traditional food is built on wheat, apricots, dairy and a little meat, and it is mild rather than spicy. The dishes to try are chapshuro, minced meat sealed in thin dough and cooked until crisp; diram phitti, a thick bread of sprouted wheat eaten with apricot oil; mamtu, steamed meat dumplings; harissa, wheat and meat cooked down to a thick porridge in the cold months; and a whole family of apricot soups, drinks and breads. Chapshuro and mamtu are easy to find in Karimabad. The rest are home cooking, and you usually have to ask.

This guide explains each dish: what goes into it, when it is eaten, and how to get hold of it. For the wider region, including Baltistan's noodles and butter tea, see our guide to Gilgit-Baltistan traditional food.

What makes Hunza food different

For most of its history Hunza fed itself from terraced fields and orchards, cut off for months of the year. The kitchen reflects that: wheat, barley and buckwheat, milk, butter and cheese, dried fruit for the winter, and meat for guests and special days. Apricot trees gave fruit to eat fresh and dry, kernels to snack on, and the oil that finishes many dishes.

The food is not hot. Chilli, where it appears, is usually a sauce on the side. Dishes go by Burushaski names in central Hunza, while Gojal, north of Attabad Lake, speaks Wakhi and has words of its own. You will also hear that the Hunza diet makes people live to 120. That claim has been repeated since the 1930s and has never been backed by evidence, so come for the flavours instead.

Chapshuro

Chapshuro is the dish everyone asks for. Minced beef or mutton is mixed with onion, green chilli and herbs, spread between two thin rounds of dough, sealed at the edges and cooked until the crust is crisp and the filling is juicy. It is cut into wedges like a pizza and eaten with the hands.

It began in Nagar, across the river from Karimabad, and has spread along the Karakoram Highway until it is now made all over Hunza and in Gilgit. Most restaurants in Karimabad have it on the menu. It is made to order, so expect a short wait, and eat it the moment it arrives: cold chapshuro is a sad thing.

Diram phitti

Diram is flour made from wheat that has been soaked until it sprouts, then dried and ground. Sprouting turns some of the starch to sugar, which is why diram phitti is sometimes described as a sweet bread, although nothing sweet is added. Phitti is the thick round loaf baked from it.

It is not eaten like naan. The bread is broken into pieces in a bowl and soaked in apricot oil or melted butter, and eaten warm, traditionally as a winter breakfast. It is dense, filling and slightly malty.

Because the flour takes days to prepare, few places make diram phitti on demand. Ask your guesthouse a day ahead, or look for it at the cafés that specialise in Hunza food.

Mamtu

Mamtu are steamed dumplings, close cousins of the Afghan mantu and the Tibetan momo. The filling is minced meat with onion and a little spice, wrapped in thin dough and steamed. They are served with yoghurt and herbs, and often with vinegar, black pepper and chilli sauce.

Mamtu are as common in Gilgit as in Hunza, and a safe first order in the north: familiar enough for children, different enough to feel local.

Harissa

Harissa is wheat and meat cooked together for hours, with ghee, and stirred until the grain and meat break down into a smooth, thick, slightly stretchy porridge. Versions of it are made from the Arab world to Armenia and South Asia; in Hunza it is food for the cold months.

It takes hours to make, so it is cooked in quantity for families and gatherings rather than to order, and visitors in summer are unlikely to find it on a menu. If you are in Hunza in winter, or staying with a family, ask whether anyone is making it. Our guide to Hunza in winter covers what else a cold-season trip involves.

Breads, pancakes and cheese

Bread is the centre of most Hunza meals, and a few kinds are worth knowing by name:

• Giyalin: thin pancakes, the kind of thing a guesthouse makes for breakfast.
• Burus berikutz: bread made with burus, the local cheese.
• Hani chay berikuch: bread stuffed with crushed apricot kernels and baked.
• Buckwheat bread: part of the older diet of the valley, heavier than wheat bread.

None of these is a restaurant staple; look for them at guesthouse breakfasts and in the few places that cook Hunza food.

Apricot dishes explained

In Hunza the apricot is less a fruit than a whole pantry, and Burushaski has a word for almost every stage of it. Pamir Times has published a detailed list of apricot products in Burusho culture; these are the ones a visitor is most likely to meet:

• Juruti: unripe green apricots, eaten for their sour taste.
• Batering: apricots split, stoned and sun-dried.
• Guli: whole apricots dried with the stone inside, so you get the kernel too.
• Baterchay dawdo: a soup made from dried apricots.
• Chamus: a drink made by squeezing dried apricots in water.
• Apricot juice: dried apricots soaked in water for hours until the water takes their flavour.
• Bataasin: apricot vinegar, made by fermenting ripe fruit.
• Kernels: the sweet ones are eaten like almonds, and pressed for the oil that is used for cooking and also on hair and skin.

The fresh fruit comes in from June in the lower villages to late summer higher up, and in a good year the roofs of Karimabad and Altit are covered in apricots drying in the sun. Our guide to the dry fruits of Gilgit-Baltistan explains how to tell sun-dried from sulphured apricots, and sweet kernels from bitter ones, before you buy.

Walnuts get similar treatment. Kilao is walnuts coated in a thick syrup of grape or mulberry juice, a traditional sweet you can buy in Karimabad. The walnut cake served in the town's cafés is the modern favourite.

Hunza food through the year

What you can eat depends on when you come.

• June and July: cherries, then the first apricots. Ginani, the harvest festival, usually falls in June, when households cook special dishes from the new crop.
• Late summer and autumn: apricots drying on the roofs, then walnuts.
• Winter: diram phitti for breakfast, harissa, and meat preserved for the coldest months.

How to eat traditional food in Hunza

Most restaurant menus in Karimabad and Aliabad lean towards karahi, daal, rice and Chinese dishes, with chapshuro and mamtu added. For the rest, a little effort pays off:

1. Go where the Hunza dishes are the point. A small number of places, including the Hunza Food Pavilion in Karimabad and the Kha Basi café in the garden below Altit Fort, cook local food rather than adding it to a Pakistani menu. Our guide to the best restaurants in Hunza covers them.
2. Ask your guesthouse a day ahead. Family-run places will often cook diram phitti, giyalin or apricot soup if they know in advance.
3. Allow time. Almost everything is made to order.
4. Mind nut allergies. Apricot kernels, their oil and walnuts go into a great many dishes, often without being mentioned on a menu.
5. Vegetarians do well. The breads, pancakes and apricot dishes contain no meat.

Is it worth seeking out?

Yes, if you are curious. A hot chapshuro and a bowl of apricot soup tell you more about the valley than another viewpoint. Don't expect spice or fanfare: this is plain, careful food made from what grows in the valley.

If your group wants only familiar food, karahi, daal, rice and naan are available everywhere in Hunza. Order one chapshuro for the table and let everyone try it. Our Gilgit and Hunza page shows how our trips spend their days in Karimabad and the villages, where these dishes are made.

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