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While you may like to believe that paratha is a Punjabi phenomenon, the truth is that it has fans all across the country. While Uttar Pradesh prides in its Ulte Tawe Ka Paratha, Bengal redefines decadence every day with its meat and egg-filed Mughlai Paratha, and Kerala serves up a portion of comfort with each serving of Malabar Parotta and beef fry. In this happy family of parathas/parotta, a humble aloo paratha occupies a very special place. A desi breakfast favourite, aloo paratha, is a flatbread made of whole wheat flour or refined flour. The dough is filled with spicy, mashed potatoes and is rolled out on a chakla with help of a belan (rolling pin) until the dough is perfectly round and flat. This dough is then placed on greased tawa and cooked on both sides until the paratha is brown and crispy. In India, it is a widely accepted love language to serve aloo parathas with a cube or two of butter.
Now, aloo parathas can be of many sizes, it largely depends on how much dough you have used to make the paratha. A video posted by YouTube channel Aamchi Mumbai, this aloo paratha may just be the biggest paratha of Mumbai. That’s right. This video shot at K1 Paratha centre, at Adani Western Heights, Andheri 4 Bungalows captures a street food vendor, who makes a thick and large aloo paratha in no time. His deft paratha-making skills are stirring up quite a storm on the internet. Within six days, the video has clocked in more than 5.6 million views.
To make the parathas, he first pulls out a chunk from his wheat dough, and presses it using his palms and fingers. He then fills the dough with not one or two but five spoonfuls of spicy aloo masala and presses it flat. He then folds the dough and seals the masala inside the giant atta dumpling. You have the choice to pick the fat in which the paratha will cook, you can either pick olive oil, sunflower oil, ghee or butter. The potato-filled dough is dusted off in lose wheat flour and rolled flat and cooked on hot griddle. While cooking, the vendor also makes a few cuts on the surface of the paratha so that the heavy filling inside is cooked properly.
The comments section is abuzz with many reactions, some are impressed by the level of hygiene practiced in the making of the paratha, “The place is very clean and hygienic...the paratha looks very nice..it would be tasty too”, wrote a user, some seemed moved by the vendors patience and skills, “Can’t believe this is street food, this looks better than most 7-star restaurants. He makes it with great patience and doesn’t do in a hurry”, a user commented.
Whether it is the biggest paratha or not, it is tough to tell, but it sure looks tempting and loaded enough to catch our fancy. Watch the video here.
