Made from the meat of the heads of sheep and calves, the famous pacha dish is an acquired taste for sure.
The dish is preferred in chilly weather and can be eaten in the morning or the evening, but is more commonly consumed as breakfast.
Once winter sets in, Kirkuk's pacha chefs put the greasy meat-based dish on the plates of customers at diners.
The meal is either made with veal or lamb and features nearly every part of the animal including the trotters, tripe and stomach.
Mundhir Mohammed, a regular customer at a restaurant serving pacha, says he prefers the lamb-based pacha.
The veal pacha is a lighter and less oily version of the dish that could be a better option for people with hypertension, he adds.
To make the pacha dish, the meat is boiled in broth and seasoned with lemons and onions.
Once the meat is cooked, chunks of it are placed on top of slices of pita bread soaked in broth.
Then the relatively inexpensive Iraqi dish is ready to be served.
At the Mussala Pacha restaurant, a well-known destinations for fans of the dish, a full plate of pacha costs 12,000 Iraqi dinars ($10), while a smaller plater sells for 7,000 dinar ($6).
"Mainly, they (people) come to eat in the mornings. They come also during lunch and dinner times, but the majority come in the mornings," says pacha chef Salih Najat at the Mussala restaurant.
The famous Iraqi dish is eaten all year round but is more popular during chilly weather.
The dish features in the cuisine of many Iraqi cities including Baghdad, Mosul and Basra, but it is associated with different traditions in different areas.
For example, unlike Kirkuk and Mosul, people in Baghdad usually have the dish for dinner rather than breakfast.
The oldest known recipes in the world come from Iraq, and were inscribed on Babylonian tablets going back to 1700 B.C.
Reporting by Associated Press
