Local Food Dishes Of Skardu Baltistan – GB Most Famous Dishes

If you are a foody person, this is the perfect article where you will get to know about some Famous Local Food Dishes Of Skardu, Baltistan.

Skardu Baltistan is well known for its natural beauty, weather, high mountains, and tasty foods. Normally, we observe that most people discuss only the beauty of Skardu Baltistan, mountains, Lakes in GB, and many other things, but they always miss or ignore the local food and dishes of Skardu Baltistan.

In this blog post, I want to introduce some amazing local foods from Skardu, Baltistan. The specialty of this food is not only the taste, but these dishes are only made in Skardu, Baltistan. You can not find them anywhere else in the world.

I will use the local name of all the dishes; it may be difficult for you to pronounce the name in the local language, but it is totally “OK”. Because I am sure if you visit Skardu, Baltistan, and ask for the dishes with broken names, the local people will understand, and they will serve you the exact dish.

Here is the list of some of the most popular local dishes of Skardu, Baltistan:

1. Payo Cha

2. Prapo

3. Zan

4. Balay

#1- Payo Cha نمکین چائے

The word “PayoCha” is a combination of two words.

• Payo (Local Name), which means Salt

• Cha (Urdu Word0 which means Tea

It is one of the most widely used drinks in Baltistan, especially in the District Ghanche, Khaplu, Baltistan. If you ever experience Kashmiri Chai/Tea, you can just imagine what the Payo Cha of Baltistan looks like by color. The color of Payo Cha نمکین چائے is brown, the same as Kashmiri Tea, but the taste and the making process are totally different.

Payo Cha/Tea tastes salty because the major ingredient in this tea is salt.

The Making of Payo Cha

Ingredients used in Payo Cha.

• Tea Leafs

• Butter

• Salt

• Milk

• Baking Soda

Tea Leaf

To make Pay Cha/Salted Tea, the most important thing is the tea leaf, which is quite expensive compared to other coffee and tea powders. These are not the normal tea leaves that are used in Kashmiri Tea.

Pure Butter/Ghee

Extract from fresh cow milk, in Payo Cha, we locally use Pure and fresh butter, which makes the taste out of the world. Pure butter/ghee is also very expensive in the market when we go to buy it. But most locals make this ghee at their homes.

Salt

Salt is also a major part of this tea. Without salt, it is not considered to be drunk by the local people. Salt is the major part, which is why the name of this tea is Paro Cha. We already discussed above that the name of this tea is Payo Cha, which means Salted Tea.

Milk

We all use milk in our daily lives. Just like the use of milk in normal tea we make at home, we use fresh cow milk in this special tea made in Skardu, Baltistan. It is our choice that we use fresh cow, goat milk, or milk powder, which we can buy from the market. The locals always prefer to use fresh cow milk because it makes the taste very different than using powder milk.

Another reason may be that all locals of Skardu, Baltistan, have cows or goats at their homes, so they can get fresh and pure milk free of cost.

Baking Soda

Baking Soda helps to make the color more attractive, brown, which is the actual color, and which we expect.

#2- Prapo پراپو

Another most loved cuisine in Skardu, Baltistan, by the locals and by the tourists is named Prapo and پراپو in the local Balti language.

The Making of Prapo

The uses in Prapo are:

• Walnut

• Floor

• Water

• Salt