Aloo Paratha

Paratha's are flatbread made with whole wheat flour. Mostly they are stuffed with vegetables, like potato, radish, cauliflower, cabbage and so on. Aloo paratha's are more popular among paratha's. Spiced potato stuffing is used as a filling to make aloo paratha. Though i am a beginner at making paratha's, here is a picture presentation of how i made it.

Ingredients

For dough

3 cups - Wheat flour
1 tbsp - Ghee /Oil
Water to knead the dough
Salt to taste

Instead of ghee or oil, i used 1/4 cup - crumbled paneer, freshly made. ( This helps in making paratha soft)

For filling

4 - Potatoes, boil & mash
1/2 cup - Onion, chopped finely
2- 3 - Green chili, chopped finely
1/2 tsp - Ginger, grated
1 cup - Coriander leaves, chopped finely
1/4 to 1/2 tsp - Ajwain
1 tsp - Coriander powder
1/2 tsp - Amchoor powder / Dry mango powder
1/2 tsp - Garam masala powder
2 pinch - Roasted jeera powder / Roasted cumin powder
Salt to taste

Method

1 ) To make the filling - Boil potatoes and mash it well. Add rest of the ingredients listed for filling and mix well with potato.

2 ) To make the dough - Mix wheat flour, oil and salt. Mix and rub the flour to get oil and salt well mixed. Then add water little by little, knead and make a stiff dough. Rest the dough for 20 to 30 minutes. Cover with wet towel, so that dough doesn't dry out. Then again knead the dough to get a soft workable dough.

Here is two methods to roll out the paratha.

Method 1

a ) Make 10 small balls of the dough. Take one dough ball and roll it out with a rolling pin.

• Make a small ball of filling and place in the center of the rolled out dough.
• Now as in picture in the middle, wrap the dough around the filling ball and close. Dust some flour and then lightly flatten the dough with hand.
  

b) With a rolling pin, roll out carefully to make a round paratha.

Method 2

a ) Out of the 10 dough balls. Divide each dough ball into 2. So now you have 20 dough balls in total.

• To make one paratha, roll out 2 dough balls.
• In one rolled out dough, spread the filling, as in picture above.
• Place the other rolled out dough on top of the filled dough. Press the edges to seal in. Dust with flour and roll out the paratha.

b ) If pressing the edges is not working out then try as shown in third picture above, by folding the edges and roll out the paratha.

3 ) Heat a tawa or a pan, on medium heat and place the paratha in it. Smear some oil on top and around the paratha. Flip and cook evenly on both sides, till it's golden brown in colour on both sides.

Serve with plain yogurts /curds or raita and pickle.

Enjoy this hearty meal with a glass of Sweet or salty Lassi.

• Other stuffed parantha's to try -

Matar Parantha - Green peas paratha