- 6 hours ago
These Kati Rolls are One of India's Best Street Foods
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Short filmTranscript
00:02Oh. My. Lord. We are in Delhi, capital of India, in one of the great food cities of the world.
00:10And one of the street foods that has become extremely popular is the kati roll.
00:14Originally from Kolkata, but now just a fan favorite everywhere.
00:17Absolutely delicious morsels of meat wrapped up in a flaky paratha.
00:21And then the magic trick is a layer of egg inside the paratha.
00:24Behind me is New Zika Kati Roll Company, famous for their butter chicken kati roll.
00:29Here's what I love about this operation.
00:31Every good street cart vendor has got to advertise what they do in an instant.
00:35Here are your choices of what you want inside the kati roll.
00:38It's the ultimate show and tell of the street cart business.
00:42So come on in. This is amazing. I thought this was the whole operation.
00:46Turns out there's a little kitchen back here.
00:48It's like a little kati roll narnia back here. Let's go see what's going on.
00:51You can see the chicken being skewered, dark meat, because you know it's going to stay juicy
00:55even after being grilled at high heat.
00:57So, chicken skewer goes in the tundari oven.
01:00And, oh, this is a charcoal tundari oven.
01:04They're more and more rare. Everybody's working usually with a gas tundari oven.
01:08They both retain the same amount of heat, but with the wood charcoal you get the aromatics.
01:12Oh man, that is incredible. And the inside is lined with clay.
01:15Once it's seasoned, that clay retains an incredible amount of heat
01:18and it uses a convection effect of air circulating inside so that the meats are cooking.
01:23Pulls it out every now and then and then puts it back in.
01:26What he's doing is resting the chicken.
01:28If you just leave it in there that intense heat, which is about 900 to 1000 degrees,
01:33you're going to have chicken that's burnt on the outside and raw on the inside.
01:35But when you pull it out and let it rest for a second, it redistributes the heat.
01:39This metal skewer gets hot also.
01:41So obviously that's critical to cooking the whole thing from the inside out and from the outside in.
01:48On to the flat top.
01:51The jugard here is evident, of course, the MacGyvering as I like to call it.
01:55You got your LP tank sitting right over here.
01:57The gas line cutting across in front of the cook.
01:59The range is essentially for bricks that this 50 pound slab of castron is sitting on.
02:05So he just added some refined oil to help saute and sear the chicken,
02:10sort of giving it a little bit of a fry first.
02:11Green bell pepper about to go in.
02:14Next up, some onions.
02:16This is turning into a whole dish.
02:18What he's made here is the base for the kati roll chicken.
02:21This is the kati chicken.
02:22This is his unique take on it to saute it with the onions.
02:26One small piece, thank you.
02:28It's about to go in my mouth.
02:34That is a delicious bite.
02:36Everything's customizable.
02:38You can order the traditional kati roll filling
02:40and have him make that with butter sauce.
02:42Or you can order just plain chicken tikka.
02:44No oil.
02:45And he's about to hit this with some butter chicken sauce.
02:52That, it looks amazing.
02:54Not only is the chicken obviously getting cooked in the sauce,
02:57the sauce itself is also getting cooked and caramelized in the griddle.
03:00So you're going to get a really nice thick gravy-coated pieces of chicken,
03:04so that it's not a sloppy mess.
03:06Let's take a look and see how the parate itself gets made.
03:08The piece de resistance of the kati roll.
03:10That's pure ghee that was just melted on the range.
03:13Ghee is going to create flakiness,
03:15putting a little bit of flour in the middle,
03:17so that the protein, the fats have a chance to create that separation.
03:20The constant folding and rolling is going to create these layers.
03:23By rolling it up this way, as they compress back down again,
03:26the ghee ensures that they'll separate and puff back up again when they're put on the flat top.
03:31Everybody's got their own particular folding technique, almost like you would for dumplings.
03:35This is cool, this is the first time I've seen them made into a cone like this.
03:38He's tucked the edges in obviously, so that way when he rolls it out,
03:42the ragged edges don't just splay back out again.
03:45Oh my lord, look at that.
03:50That is so cool.
03:53He's already created the layers on the inside by creating the cone,
03:56and now by pressing it down, he's creating these additional layers.
04:00My god, it's like a potter with a pottery wheel.
04:03I mean, they're beautiful to look at.
04:05We're not in the fancy confines of a European patisserie.
04:09This technique is on par with pretty much anything you'd see in a French bakery.
04:14I love beauty in food, it just accentuates everything.
04:18Every time an order comes in, this gentleman's going to grab one,
04:20roll it out, and make a fresh kati roll.
04:23So this is basically a tawa, a giant tawa.
04:25When you look at the bottom of it, you can see the carbonization.
04:28This thing's been around for a while.
04:31But the surface is absolutely glassy smooth.
04:35It's a refined oil in the middle.
04:36You're not quite frying it, you're griddling it.
04:38It's starting to puff up a little bit because, remember, you've got those layers in there,
04:41and they'll separate as the heat hits the layers and the ghee instead starts to cook.
04:45And this is going fast.
04:47I mean, look at the temperature on this.
04:48Now, you can see the signature striations already starting to form in the circle,
04:52and that's, you can see where it was rolled the way it was done.
04:54And it's both, obviously, part of the texture of this paratha, but also part of its signature.
05:00Look, in order to be successful in this particular diverse neighborhood of people from all backgrounds,
05:04he is a customizable kati roll joint.
05:06You can have it any way you want.
05:08So, if somebody wants an egg, he even has a double egg kati roll,
05:12which is just basically pure egg with some vegetables in it, scrambled.
05:17Look at that.
05:18Look at that.
05:20Just right on the paratha.
05:23Right, that says mixing bowl.
05:24Right there.
05:29That's so sexy looking.
05:31You know that's going to taste amazing.
05:33He's using the less cooked side of the paratha so that the egg will stick to it when he flips
05:37it.
05:37Whisk his eggs into essentially an omelet-making operation here.
05:40And then he's going to pour the eggs out of the paratha bowl onto the griddle, making an omelet.
05:47And by putting it down on the raw side of the egg, it's cooking from the bottom up.
05:51But you know that the part where the paratha was still a little bit uncooked on the inside
05:55is going to be absolutely soft and fluffy and delicious.
05:58So, I'm going to order my first kati roll and given that this is the house of specialization,
06:02the house of customization, I'm going to make it my way.
06:04One butter chicken kati, then I'll add an enda, and onions, and chutneys.
06:11One.
06:13Single egg, double egg would be insane.
06:16They probably think I'm insane for ordering single egg, but whatever.
06:19The flip, the turn, the puff.
06:25But now I'm going to press it in.
06:28I'm going to press it in.
06:30I'm going to get some more.
06:30Yes, it's good.
06:31You're going to get some more?
06:32Yes.
06:32Yes, it's good.
06:32You're going to get some more?
06:34So, I asked him to not overcook my egg because I'm hoping the egg acts as almost like that
06:40butter, that mayonnaise.
06:41Oh, come, come, come.
06:42Butter chicken.
06:44Going on.
06:46Shaved onion on the top, a little bit of mayonnaise.
06:52some tasty Indian ketchup some of that lovely mint and yogurt green chutney and a little bit
07:00of chaat masala my own personal khati chicken roll guy wrapped up it's a very loose wrap
07:07ah thank you I feel like I should hold this up to the skies you can see these layers of
07:17flakiness
07:17I mean very much like the the folds of a croissant and then inside you can see that layer of
07:22egg is
07:23perfectly all the way to the edges so you don't just have a little egg on the inside when he
07:27flipped
07:28it over I saw it spread out and any egg that escaped the vortex he sort of tucked it back
07:33in to make sure
07:34that none of that egg that I'm paying for is lost I don't even have to take a bite to
07:38know that this
07:38thing is going to be incredible
07:48oh my lord oh my lord god dang somebody just slapped me silly this is incredible it tastes
08:02exactly how I imagine it would be the butter chicken is moist delicious tangy with that sauce
08:09and this flaky paratha I mean as you peel each layer back it's just absolutely magical it's well
08:16seasoned also when you bite through you can actually feel your teeth go through the outer
08:22layer of a little bit of that crispiness and that flakiness and then the inside is buttery and warm
08:27and soft and almost melds with the butter chicken really a great bite there's just no way you can go
08:33back to eating a hot dog after this and feel like something special happened Chicagoans don't kill me
08:42every one of these street food experiences is just eye-opening and humbling to watch this man for 16
08:49years perfect rolling out just a humble paratha but doing it with finesse and technique and pride as I
08:57always say it's the people behind the food their passion their craftsmanship their dedication their
09:03discipline that just lights me up on the inside number eight double chicken ticker roll egg chicken
09:09ticker roll double egg chicken ticker roll single egg double chicken ticker roll double egg double
09:15chicken ticker roll chicken malay ticker roll egg chicken malay ticker roll and then double egg chicken
09:22malay ticker roll you know what i'm a little disappointed they don't have double egg double chicken
09:28double Malay take a rope.
09:30It probably ran out of rope.
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