These Kati Rolls are One of India's Best Street Foods | Street Eats | Bon Appétit

Oh my lord, we are in Delhi, capital of India and one of the great food cities of the world and one of the street foods that has become extremely popular is the kati roll. Originally from Kolkata, but now just a fan favorite everywhere. Absolutely delicious morsels of meat wrapped up in a flaky paratha and then the magic trick is a layer of egg inside the paratha. Behind me is New Zaika Kati Roll Company famous for their butter chicken kati roll. Here's what I love about this operation. Every good street cart vendor has got to advertise what they do in an instant. Here are your choices of what you want inside the kati roll. It's the ultimate show and tell of the street cart business. So come on in. This is amazing. I thought this was the whole operation. Turns out there's a little kitchen back here. It's like a little kati roll Narnia back here. Let's go see what's going on. You can see the chicken being skewered, dark meat because you know it's going to stay juicy even after being grilled at high heat. So chicken skewer goes in the tandoori oven. And This is a charcoal tandoori oven. They're more and more rare as everybody's working usually with a gas tandoori oven. They both retain the same amount of heat, but with the wood charcoal you get the aromatics. Oh man, that is incredible. The inside is lined with clay. Once it's seasoned that clay retains an incredible amount of heat and it uses a convection effect of air circulating inside so that the meats are cooking. Pulls it out every now and then puts it back in. What he's doing is resting the chicken. If you just leave it in there that intense heat which is about 900 to 1000 degrees, you're going to have chicken that's burnt on the outside and raw on the inside. But when you pull it out and let it rest for a second, it redistributes the heat. This metal skewer gets hot also. So obviously that's critical to cooking the whole thing from the inside out and from the outside in. Onto the flat top. The jugaad here is evident of course. They they the McGuyvering as I like to call it. You got your LP tank sitting right over here. The gas line cutting across in front of the cook. The range is essentially four bricks that this 50 lb slab of cast iron is sitting on. So he just added some refined oil to help saute and sear the chicken sort of giving it a little bit of a fry first. Green bell pepper about to go in. Next up, some onions. This is turning into a whole dish. So what he's made here is the base for the kati roll chicken. This is the kati chicken. This is his unique take on it to saute it with the onions. One small piece, thank you. It's about to go in my mouth. That is a delicious bite. Everything's customizable. You can order the traditional kati roll filling and have him make that with butter sauce or you can order just plain chicken tikka, no oil and he's about to hit this with some butter chicken sauce. That it looks amazing. Not only is the chicken obviously getting cooked in the sauce, the sauce itself is also getting cooked and caramelized in the griddle. So you're going to get a really nice thick gravy coated pieces of chicken so that it's not a sloppy mess. Let's take a look and see how the paratha itself gets made, the piece de resistance of the kati roll. That's pure ghee that was just melted on the range. Ghee is going to create flakiness putting a little bit of flour in the middle so that the protein, the fats have a chance to create that separation. The constant folding and rolling is going to create these layers. By rolling it up this way as they compress back down again, the ghee ensures that they'll separate and puff back up again when they're put on the flat top. Everybody's got their own particular folding technique almost like you would for dumplings. This is cool. It's the first time I've seen them made into a cone like this. He's tucked the edges in obviously so that way when he rolls it out the ragged edges don't display back out again. To oh my lord, look at that. That is so cool. He's already created the layers in the inside by creating the cone and now by pressing it down, he's creating these additional layers. My god, it's like a potter with a pottery wheel. I mean they're beautiful to look at. We're not in the fancy confines of a European patisserie. This technique is on par with pretty much anything you'd see in a French bakery. I love beauty in food. It just accentuates everything. Every time an order comes in, this gentleman's going to grab one, roll it out and make a fresh kati roll. So this is basically a tawa, a giant tawa. When you look at the bottom of it, you can see the carbonization. This thing's been around for a while, but the surface is absolutely glassy smooth. Some refined oil in the middle. You're not quite frying it, you're griddling it. It's trying to puff up a little bit because remember you've got those layers in there and they'll separate as the heat hits the layers and the ghee inside starts to cook. And this is going fast. I mean look at the temperature on this. Now you can see the signature striations already starting to form in the circle and that's you can see where it was rolled, the way it was done. And it's both obviously part of the texture of this paratha, but also part of its signature look. In order to be

successful in this particular diverse neighborhood of people from all backgrounds, he is a customizable kati roll joint. You can have it any way you want. So if somebody wants an egg, he even has a double egg kati roll which is just basically pure egg with some vegetables in it, scrambled. Look at that. Just right on the paratha. Right, that's his mixing bowl right there. That's so sexy looking. You know that's going to taste amazing. He's using the less cooked side of the paratha so that the egg will stick to it when he flips it. Whisks his eggs into essentially an omelet making operation here and then he's going to pour the eggs out of the paratha bowl onto the griddle making an omelet and by putting it down on the raw side of the egg, it's cooking from the bottom up, but you know that the part where the paratha was still a little bit uncooked in the inside is going to be absolutely soft and fluffy and delicious. So I'm going to order my first kati roll and given that this is the house of specialization, the house of customization, I'm going to make it my way. Egg butter chicken kati. Or onions. Or chutneys. Single egg, double egg would be insane. They probably think I'm insane for ordering single egg, but whatever. The flip, the turn, the puff. So I asked him to not overcook my egg cuz I'm hoping the egg acts as almost like a that butter, that mayonnaise. Ooh, come come. Butter chicken going on. Shaved onions on the top. Little bit of mayonnaise. Some tasty Indian ketchup. Some of that lovely mint and yogurt green chutney. And a little bit of chaat masala. My own personal kati chicken roll guy. Wrapped up. It's a very loose wrap. Aw, thank you. I feel like I should hold this up to the skies. — You can see these layers of flakiness. I mean very much like the folds of a croissant and then inside you can see that layer of egg is perfectly all the way to the edges so you don't just have a little egg on the inside. When he flipped it over, I saw it spread out and any egg that escaped the vortex, he sort of tucked it back in to make sure that none of that egg that I'm paying for is lost. I don't even have to take a bite to know that this thing's going to be incredible. Oh my lord. God dang, somebody needs to slap me silly. This is incredible. It tastes exactly how I imagined it would be. The butter chicken is moist, delicious, tangy with that sauce and this flaky paratha, I mean as you peel each layer back, it's just absolutely magical. It's well seasoned also. When you bite through, you can actually feel your teeth go through the outer layer of a little bit of that crispiness and that flakiness and then the inside is buttery and warm and soft and almost melds with the butter chicken. Really a great bite. There's just no way you can go back to eating a hot dog after this and feel like something special happened. Chicagoans, don't kill me. Every one of these street food experiences is just eye-opening and humbling. To watch this man for 16 years perfect rolling out just a humble paratha, but doing it with finesse and technique and pride. As I always say, it's the people behind the food. Their passion, their craftsmanship, their dedication, their discipline, it just lights me up on the inside. Number eight, double chicken tikka roll. Egg chicken tikka roll. Double Single egg double chicken tikka roll. Double Chicken malai tikka roll. Egg chicken malai tikka roll and then double roll. You know what? I'm a little disappointed they don't have double egg double chicken double malai tikka roll. They probably ran out of room.