Kolkata Street Food Delight: Egg-Chicken Roll in Bengali style
কাঠি রোল aka Bengali chicken roll comprises of skewer roasted kebabs rolled inside an Indian flatbread (Parantha) along with sauces and salad. This salad most often comprises of sliced Onion, chopped Green chillies, cucumber and even cabbage sometimes. Egg Chicken Roll is a perfect on-the-go kind of food which can be grabbed while you are on the way to your work or coming back.
While doing some research for this Egg-Chicken Roll recipe, I was quite amazed to find so many variants of this Bengali recipe. Most of them are more or less the same, barring the nomenclature! Some of the names it goes by are Egg Roll, Chicken Frankie, Chicken Tikka Roll, and many more.
Essentially a chicken egg roll has a parantha which wraps in an egg and some cooked meat (either chicken or mutton) along with spices, sauces and salad! Needless to say, there are meatless versions as well, like Paneer Roll, Frankie, which consists of a spicy Potato filling and Soya Chap Rolls.
Origin of Kathi Roll – Popular Bengali recipe in Street Food category
It was the Nizam Restaurant which pioneered this Kolkata’s iconic ‘street food’. It is said that they started with making the kebabs on iron skewers and then wrapping them in a parantha and rolling the entire thing in a paper so that people can hold it while eating.
Subsequently, as it gained rather humongous popularity among the hurried citizens, who would often stop and grab one on-the-go, Nizam had to devise a way of accommodating the growing demand. Maintaining such a large number of iron skewers was proving to be rather difficult, so they switched to Bamboo skewers aka kathi.
And, that my friend, probably blessed this Bengali street food dish with its name of ‘Kathi Roll’. Originally it was lamb meat which would be used in this Roll recipe. Over a period of time, chicken has conveniently replaced the red meat due to its abundance and affordability.
In the age of Air Fryer, making Chicken Skewers Kebabs is as easy as 1-2-3. No kidding. All you have to do is marinate the chicken for a couple of minutes, and then thread them on bamboo skewers before cooking them in an Air Fryer. The detailed recipe for air-fried Chicken Tikka is there on the blog. It adds a healthy twist to the traditional Bengali recipes.
Healthy version of street-style Egg-Chicken Roll
Now, I have made a quite a few alterations to the original method of making a street-style Kolkata Egg-Chicken Kathi Roll. First and foremost, the marinated chicken is air fried. Although, originally it is roasted over an open-pit fire, however, these days it is commonly fried over a large skillet along with sliced onion and sauces. This Air-fry technique uses no oil, hence no additional saturated fats.
The parantha used is normally made out of maida or all-purpose flour. Instead, I used whole wheat flour, which has a higher quantity of fibre. You can also try my Instant Naan recipe to wrap the rolls here. Just like I used them to make some Chicken Tikka Tacos, sounds awesome right?
Also, I didn’t use sauces, instead went for a yoghurt-based dip. I had some mint-coriander chutney with me, so I gave some that a mix with yoghurt and made some super healthy dip-sauce for the egg-chicken roll.
Note: This image is for depiction only. This is a deconstructed version of the Egg-Chicken Roll. While serving, please remove the bamboo skewers and roll the parantha for greater ease in eating.
How to make Egg-Chicken Roll in Bengali style- Ingredients list
- Whole Wheat Flour to make the paranthas or wraps for the roll
- Water to knead the dough
- Chicken Kathi Kebabs
- Eggs
- Salt to Taste
- To make the salad – Tomato, Onion, Lemon Juice, fresh herbs like coriander leaves/cilantro, etc
- To make the sauce/dip – Yogurt, Mint-Coriander Chutney, Rock Salt a few pinches
Few more popular Kolkata Street Food recipes from my blog
Have you tried this recipe? I would love to hear about it.
Tag me on Instagram @priyankabhattacharya.sa or Facebook @hashdiaries and I will share it further.
Kolkata Egg Chicken Kathi Roll is a popular Indian Street Food which is also popularly known as Egg-Chicken Roll. It comprises of roasted meat wrapped inside a parantha or indian flatbread along with salad and sauces.
- 2 cups Whole Wheat Flour
- Water to knead the dough
- 4 Eggs
- Salt to Taste
- 1 Tomato Sliced lengthwise
- 1 Onion Sliced
- Lemon Juice
- 1/4 cup Yogurt
- 2 tbsp Mint-Coriander Chutney
- Rock Salt a few pinches
Knead the dough with Flour with some salt for the paranthas. Keep it aside covered with a wet tea towel.
If you have Mint-Coriander chutney in your pantry, then take some of it and mix it with Yogurt. Season it with salt and keep it in refrigerator till you need to serve.
In case you don't have chutney on you, take a handful of coriander leaves along with stalks, mint leaves and make some chutney by grinding it into a fine paste. Add some salt, amchoor (dry mango) powder, garlic powder, red chili powder and some olive oil. Add all of this as per your taste.
Chill this till you are ready to serve the rolls.
Slice the tomato and onion and mix it with some salt and lemon juice
Pinch a ball of dough and flatten it in circular disk. Dry roast it over a skillet on both side.
Repeat it with the rest of the dough balls. We are making 4 rolls, so we will need 4 roasted paranthas. Keep them aside.
Now, whisk an egg in a bowl with some salt. Add some oil in the same skillet where you roasted the paranthas, once its hot enough pour the egg. Allow it to spread as much as it would be covered by the parantha.
Place the parantha on it and allow it to cook for couple of minutes. Now, turn it around and fry it till golden-brown.
Once it is golden and crispy on the parantha side, take it off the skillet. Place the Chicken Skewer Kebabs on the egg-side of the parantha. Top it with salad, lemon juice, rock salt and yogurt dip-sauce. Roll it and wrap it in a paper. Serve.
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