How To Make Halal Cart Chicken And Rice (NYC Style)

This is why chicken and rice is the most iconic street cart meal in all of New York City. We'll start with an easy chicken marinade. First with some plain whole milk yogurt. Yogurt is acidic and will give you more tender chicken. Then some oil, some lemon zest for some brightness, and also all that lemon juice. And now a few grated cloves of garlic. Garlic is a huge part of halal style chicken and rice. You'll find plenty of garlic in this recipe. And for the spices, we've got some smoked paprika. What I love about smoked paprika is it gives you that smoky char flavor even before the chicken hits the grill. Then turmeric, ground ginger, cumin, coriander, oregano, and a generous pinch of salt with some fresh cracked black pepper. Whisk it all up. You should already start to feel and smell all that flavor right out of the bowl. It's incredible. And then add in your boneless, skinless chicken thighs. I've gone with chicken thighs instead of chicken breasts because they've got more fat and they're packed with more flavor. But you can use chicken breasts if you like. And then get in there and mix. It's not even cooked and I wish you could be here to smell this with me. But the best way I could describe it is garlicky, smoky, and tangy with a bit of warm cumin up front. Basically just a better version of what you get when you pass a chicken and rice street cart. Cover this up with plastic wrap and place it in the fridge for at least two hours, or if you want, overnight. While our chicken marinates in the fridge, we're going to make our yellow rice. And the first step is to rinse some long grain white rice. If you skip this step, the rice will become gummy and sticky when it cooks. But for this dish, we want those separate, fluffy, individual grains of rice that can absorb all those sauces. Because remember that one of the best parts of that street cart chicken and rice is the white and red sauce that it comes with. We'll cook this in a rice maker, and that way we can really focus on making sure that our chicken and sauces are perfect. But one of the things that makes yellow rice so special is that we cook it with chicken stock instead of water. Meaning that we're cooking it in flavor, not just liquid. We'll also add some butter, turmeric, which is how the yellow rice becomes yellow, cumin seeds, a bay leaf. What's really funny about a bay leaf is that I recently saw people arguing online about what a bay leaf actually does in cooking, but nobody really figured out how to explain what that something really is. Then I'm going to put a tiny sprinkle of garlic powder just to keep that garlicky note consistent throughout the whole recipe, and we'll finish with some salt. And now into our rice maker we go. I can't even begin to describe how much better this is than plain white rice. It's time to cook. Our chicken's marinating, our yellow rice is cooking, so let's make the sauces. First, the white sauce. It must be tangy, garlicky, a little sweet, and a tiny bit herby. And the best part, it only takes a few seconds to make. We combine mayonnaise, yogurt, some lemon juice, and a healthy splash of vinegar. Then some minced garlic, dried dill, dried tarragon, a little sugar, and some salt and pepper. Notice how this sauce has a little bit of everything in it. You've got sweet, you've got sour, you've got creamy, you've got umami, you've got a little bit of everything. Simply put, it has something for everybody. Before putting it in our squeeze bottle, I'll check the consistency. And since it's a little too thick, I'll add a tiny sprinkle of water, and our white sauce is ready. Now let's make the red sauce. Here we're using chile de arbol. These have a dry and smoky heat with a little bit of a nutty and acidic bite. I'm going to add these to a bowl and cover them with warm water to soak them and wake them up. But with the power of movie magic, we don't have to wait. Because these have soaked long enough to soften, they're ready to blend into a fine, smooth sauce. With them, we'll add some garlic, cayenne pepper, smoked paprika, a splash of vinegar, and a sprinkle of salt. Close up your blender and give this a quick first blend, then add your oil and continue blending. You see how the sauce still looks separated here? We need to do our best to emulsify it by adding a little bit of water and continuing to blend. You can see after I've blended it a bit more that it's a uniform sauce, which means our red sauce is also done. The goal of your red sauce is pure heat, which is exactly what I'm getting. To cook the chicken, we'll heat a cast iron pan over high heat, then place it down and weigh it down to get that full surface contact. What we're going for here in terms of color is char, not just golden, but deep char. Because the sugars in the yogurt and spices will caramelize at high heat and that's where we get so much flavor. Once you feel you've gotten that char, go ahead and flip over your chicken. Fortunately, these ones are stuck because they're not over as high of heat. This is my little trick though, don't try this at home. Gotta give this piece some extra love. Once your first round of chicken is cooked, rest it off to the side and make sure you pick up all those little crispy bits too. Those are the best parts. And now, same thing again, cook the rest of your chicken and make sure you get that beautiful char. Now that is some good looking chicken. Wow. Just a few quick final steps before plating. First, toasting our pita, which I'm going to do in a dry pan, and then shredding up our lettuce. This should be more than enough, but I'm just going to fluff it up a little bit and then toss it into a quick ice bath so it can get ultra cold and crispy. This is a step that you don't have to do, but I've had street cart chicken and rice bowls that have been ruined because the lettuce was too soggy and this prevents that. And then my tomatoes, those will just get cut up into nice, even chunks, some bigger, some smaller. And if you want, you can remove the gooey insides, but since we're about to eat this right away and it's not really going to make anything soggy, I don't mind it in here. I should probably flip my pita here. I've just got that going over low heat though, so I can focus on everything else here. Quick sprinkle of salt onto the tomatoes to wake them up. Let's see if I can time this perfectly before my rice timer goes off. I'll chop my amazing, beautifully charred chicken into nice bite-sized cubes. Remember, usually this meal is something on the go, so you don't want to be fighting a piece of chicken when you go to eat this. That's good timing. Let's check our rice. That might've been the best timing ever. Let's see. Fluff this up a little bit. That is the perfect yellow color we were looking for. And now let's plate. For plating, I'm going to break my plate up into thirds. What I find to be the perfect ratio here. First with our yellow rice, which smells absolutely incredible. Then this amazingly charred chicken, and finally a mixture of that ice cold lettuce. This looks really good. With a couple pieces of tomato mixed in. And now I need to make some space because this is the most important part, and things are going to get messy. Get a little practice first, and then we go. There's our white sauce, and there's our red sauce. Nice. I'm going right in the middle. The trifecta. Actually, a little more sauce. Usually I leave the plate so you can keep looking at it, but I'm taking this one to go. You're coming too.