Aloo Paratha
(Potato-stuffed bread)
Torn aloo paratha with side of greek yogurt & achaar
What you need
Supplies
Cast iron pan or a tawa (a flat, metal griddle used for Indian flatbreads)
Stand mixer, optional - for kneading dough
Mixing bowls
Good counter / working space for stuffing & rolling out parathas
Rolling pin
A sous chef to help you during the cooking part, if you want to speed things up by dividing and conquering
Ingredients
4 small to medium gold Yukon potatoes, boiled & peeled
2 cups atta (whole-wheat flour) + some loose flour for the rolling out process
fresh green chili peppers (serrano or Thai peppers)
fresh cilantro leaves
ghee
Spices: ground cumin, ground coriander, ground fennel seed, red chili powder, salt, aamchur (dry mango powder), mustard oil
What to do
Boil & peel the potatoes, if they aren’t already.
Start with the dough. Put your 2 cups of whole-wheat flour into a mixing bowl and add 1 tsp kosher salt and about 1 cup of lukewarm water. Start mixing until it loosely forms a ball; you may need to add up to ~1/4 cup more water. If you have a stand mixer, feel free to use that here. Mix for 3 min until it forms a ball and then proceed to knead for another 3 min until you have a well-formed, not sticky ball of dough. Cover with a paper towel and set aside.
Next we make the filling. For the filling, mash the potatoes with 1 tsp ground cumin, 1 tsp ground coriander, 1/2 tsp ground fennel seed, 1/2 tsp red chili powder (add an extra 1/4 tsp for an extra kick!), 1 tsp salt, 1/2 tsp dry mango powder, and 1 tbsp mustard oil. If you have fresh ingredients (the green chilis and/or the fresh cilantro), finely chop them and mix well until there are no clumps in the potato mixture. For the real Verma paratha experience, add some red chili pickle (mirchi achaar).
And now, we stuff the dough. Roll out the dough into a log and cut into about 8 pieces — a single ball of dough should barely fit in the palm of your hand. For the stuffing process, take a segment of the dough and roll it into a ball. With a rolling pin, roll out the dough into a small, ~4 inch round. Use your hands & fingers to form like a small bowl of dough. Take a big spoon of the stuffing (about 1/8 of what you created) and put it inside the dough bowl, and then pinch the edges together, surrounding the filling. Push it together to seal the dough. [This whole process is pictured as a series below.] Personally, I like to stuff all my dough balls before I start the rolling & cooking process.
It’s time to roll. Coat the ball of dough with the wheat flour that you have on the side so that it doesn’t stick to the rolling pin. Roll it out to your desired thickness or desired size (make sure it’s a size that will fit in your pan and that you’ll be able to comfortably move from your working space to the pan…)
Finally, we cook it. Make sure your pan is solidly hot before adding the rolled out paratha to the pan. Once you start seeing small bubbles forming, you can flip the paratha, add a light drizzle of ghee while the other side cooks, before flipping again. The paratha will start to puff up, which gives time for the steam collecting to cook the dough from the inside. Let it get lightly browned before removing from the pan. This is where a sous chef can come in handy so one of you can keep an eye on the paratha on the stove while the other rolls the next one out.
Enjoy hot and with a side of greek yogurt or achaar (Indian pickles).
Click on the pictures for details of each step.
