Calories in Pakistani Food: Roti, Daal, Biryani, Karahi, Chai

Why counting calories in desi food is hard

Most calorie apps and charts are built around Western food. Search for "chicken karahi" or "doodh patti" and you often get nothing useful, or a crowd-sourced entry with no serving size. That makes it hard to know what you are actually eating, even if you cook the same meals every week.

Home-cooked Pakistani food also varies a lot. The same daal can be light or heavy depending on how much oil or ghee goes into the tarka, and one family's biryani plate is very different from another's. So the best you can do is start from a sensible typical value for a defined serving, then adjust for your own cooking.

Where these numbers come from

The values below come from the built-in food list in our Calorie Tracker app. Each entry was reviewed by hand rather than crowd-sourced. They are typical averages based on USDA FoodData Central and common home-style recipes, for the serving shown, with the serving weight in grams.

To use the list, find the closest match to what is on your plate, check the serving weight, and scale up or down. If your bowl of daal is about 300 g instead of 200 g, multiply by one and a half. A kitchen scale makes this easy the first few times; after that most people can judge a portion by eye.

Treat them as estimates. Restaurant food and dishes cooked with more oil or ghee can be noticeably higher. If you want more accuracy, weigh your portion once and compare it with the grams listed.

Calories in roti, paratha, naan and rice

Bread and rice are where most of the calories in a desi meal come from, simply because we eat a lot of them.

• Roti / chapati (whole wheat): 1 medium (40 g), 120 kcal
• Plain paratha: 1 medium (80 g), 260 kcal
• Aloo paratha: 1 medium (130 g), 320 kcal
• Naan, plain: 1 piece (90 g), 262 kcal
• Basmati rice, cooked: 1 cup (163 g), 210 kcal

Calories in daal, biryani, karahi and nihari

Curries and rice dishes vary the most, mainly because of the oil. These are home-style estimates:

• Daal (masoor/moong), cooked: 1 cup (200 g), 230 kcal
• Daal chana, cooked: 1 cup (200 g), 270 kcal
• Chana masala / cholay: 1 cup (240 g), 290 kcal
• Chicken biryani: 1 plate (350 g), 610 kcal
• Chicken pulao: 1 plate (300 g), 480 kcal
• Chicken karahi: 1 cup (200 g), 380 kcal
• Chicken curry (salan): 1 cup (240 g), 330 kcal
• Beef nihari: 1 cup (240 g), 480 kcal
• Haleem: 1 cup (240 g), 380 kcal
• Sabzi (mixed vegetable curry): 1 cup (200 g), 160 kcal

Calories in chai, lassi and snacks

Drinks and snacks are easy to forget, but two or three cups of chai a day add up.

• Doodh patti chai (milk, 1 tsp sugar): 1 cup (200 g), 110 kcal
• Lassi, sweet: 1 glass (250 g), 230 kcal
• Samosa (potato): 1 piece (80 g), 260 kcal
• Halwa puri breakfast: 1 plate (350 g), 900 kcal
• Desi ghee: 1 tbsp (13 g), 112 kcal

What a typical meal adds up to

Using the list above, you can estimate a whole meal by adding up its parts. For example, two rotis (240 kcal) with a cup of chicken karahi (380 kcal) comes to about 620 kcal before any raita, salad or drink. A plate of chicken biryani on its own is about 610 kcal, and a cup of doodh patti chai afterwards brings it to about 720 kcal.

A few things that make a big difference to the total:

• Oil and ghee. One tablespoon of desi ghee is 112 kcal. A dish that looks similar can be a few hundred calories higher if more oil sits on top.
• Number of rotis. Going from three rotis to two with the same salan saves 120 kcal.
• Sugar in chai. The chai value above assumes 1 teaspoon of sugar per cup. More sugar, more calories.
• Fried breakfasts. A halwa puri plate is about 900 kcal, so it is worth saving for the weekend.

Can you eat desi food and still lose weight?

Yes. You do not need to give up roti or rice. What matters over time is the total amount you eat compared with what your body uses. Some practical habits:

• Fill half the plate with salan or sabzi and eat rice or roti with it, rather than the other way around.
• Ask for less oil at home, or spoon off the oil that collects on top of karahi and nihari.
• Count your rotis and your cups of chai for a week. Just knowing the numbers usually changes them.
• Weigh a typical serving of rice or biryani once, so you know what "one plate" means in your house.

Track desi food with Calorie Tracker

Writing all this down by hand gets tiring, which is why we are building Calorie Tracker for Android. Its food list has about 130 built-in foods with gram weights, including the roti, daal, biryani, karahi, nihari and chai above. You can tap a recent food, add one more serving in a tap, copy yesterday's meal, scan a barcode or snap a photo of your plate and review the result before it is logged.

It builds a personal calorie target from your age, height, weight and the pace you want, and after about two weeks of logs and weigh-ins it suggests a better target based on your real progress. It works without an account, has no ads, keeps your diary on your phone, and is available in English and Urdu.

Calorie Tracker is coming soon. If you would like to try it before launch, request early access.