Naan, Roti and Paratha: Which Bread to Order With What

Naan, roti and paratha are not three names for the same thing. They use different flour, different leavening and different heat, and each one suits a different dish. Ordering the wrong one is the most common small mistake people make with a Pakistani meal.

Naan: leavened, white flour, tandoor

Naan is made from refined white flour, leavened with yeast or yoghurt, and slapped onto the inside wall of a clay tandoor. The high, dry heat makes it puff and blister in patches. It is soft, chewy and slightly rich.

It is the bread for anything with gravy: handi, nihari, karahi. On our menu, plain naan is AED 1.50, butter naan AED 3, garlic, kalonji and roghni naan AED 4, and cheese naan AED 14.

Roti: unleavened, wholemeal, dry heat

Roti, also called chapati or tandoori roti, is wholemeal flour and water with no leavening. It is thinner, drier and considerably plainer than naan, and it is what most Pakistani households actually eat day to day. Roti is AED 3.

Order it when you want the food to be the flavour rather than the bread, or when you are eating a rich dish and do not want a rich bread alongside it.

Paratha: layered with fat, griddled

Paratha is the indulgent one. The dough is rolled, coated in ghee or oil, folded and rolled again several times to build layers, then cooked on a flat griddle rather than in a tandoor. The result is flaky, heavy and crisp at the edges.

Tandoori Paratha is AED 4. It is traditionally a breakfast bread, which is why it belongs with halwa puri at Sunday brunch rather than next to a karahi at dinner.

Which to order with what

• Nihari, handi, anything with thick gravy: naan, because you need something sturdy to scoop with
• Karahi: naan, and use it to scrape the pan, which is the point of a karahi
• A rich or fatty dish where you want balance: roti
• Breakfast, brunch, or eating bread as the main event: paratha
• Biryani and pulao: neither. They are rice dishes and need raita, not bread

That last one catches people out regularly. Biryani does not want bread with it; it wants yoghurt.

All the breads run on the dinner buffet straight from the tandoor, which is the only way to eat naan properly: within about ninety seconds of it coming off the wall.