Holiday Halal: Chicken/Lamb Combo Platter

This might be the largest post I have for ya to date. I did some location things already this year (Nebraska Runza, Cincinnati Skyline, Chicago coming soon).. but I gotta tell you what might be my favorite dish: The New York City Halal Cart.

It’s well known and famous by now, so I don’t need to get too much into it. Finding it outside of New York City isn’t all that easy. There’s been a couple shops open in my area but haven’t remained in business. There was even a “The Halal Guys” a few cities over, and that even shut down. So per usual, I guess I gotta do it myself.

I say large post, because I’m putting the recipes in here. Everything was that good, I need it documented. Strap on in, let’s do this.

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Recipe

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The Prep Table

First thing’s first, I gotta whip up some sauces. These halal carts have the famed “White Sauce” that is sacred. This is usually doused all over the meal, so I gotta make it good. The recipe I found called for some thickener, which would’ve been ideal – but I did not have it. Maybe next time. What I was really looking for is the hot sauce.. the “Red Sauce”. I’ve searched for this sauce far and wide – particularly The Halal Guys one – and while this one isn’t it, it’s pretty freakin’ close.

With the sauces prepped and underway, I needed some ground caraway. Who would’ve thought this was impossible to find in the midwest. Caraway, found it just fine. So we’re grinding. And boy was this one brutal. Peppercorns, not so bad. Caraway seeds, awful. But we’re doing it.

The Lamb Loin Roast was interesting. I’ll have to buy this one again, because the amount of fat and the way it was twined together was concerning. I haven’t done enough lamb to know, but this took more time than I had hoped. A lot of other recipes I found called for ground lamb.. and while I look forward to trying that, cubing up this roast had a great flavor.

This dish started because I found lamb on sale and bought it. I then looked for recipes and the halal cart memories came flooding in. I had a few days to get this cooked before going to my wife’s family’s Christmas dinner (where I was bringing the ham).

Why shouldn’t I bringing this to dinner along with the ham?

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The Process

We’re going to quick marinade this chicken. Using fresh lemon, we can’t let it hang around too long before it starts getting nasty.. so only let it hang out for an hour or two.

The lamb on the other hand, we can let this go all night. We’re going to cook the chicken the night before, cook the lamb the day of and reheat the chicken at the same time.

Last thing we gotta make is that yellow turmeric rice. This is another one we’re going to re-heat the next day for family. You’ll see I had a plate by myself the night before (taste test). Because I went from cooking for me to cooking for nine (minus one – my wife).. lets double, maybe triple this rice.

Chicken cooked, pieced out. Now that it’s been cooked, we can throw the remaining marinade on there for the reheat. Cooked this chicken on the RecTeq in the dark – so no great pictures of this one.. but we’ll get some great pictures in just a few.

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The Result

I mentioned a little bit of xanthan gum would’ve made the white a little more traditional, but the flavor was good. And if you’ve had the halal cart, it’s a necessity. The red hit so good. I would order like 7-8 lines and would be feeling it normally. I would feel it just the same with this one. Man, if the sauces were this good – I gotta step it up to the meats.

Had a hard time to hit, so cooked up the lamb and plated it and went. Part of the cook was to reheat the chicken, so that’s what we have here. I had the ham cooking on the RecTeq and slid the half pan of rice in there to warm up as well. Blackstone, recteq all fired up – three meats and a side.. almost like I’m legit catering over here.

I told you I made a test plate the night before of just the chicken. Now, the plates I’ve always gotten were the meat on a bed of rice and wedges of either onion, green pepper, jalapeno, etc. Doing this at home, I can mix it all up, throw the sauce on there and enjoy life. That doesn’t play nice with the food blog because the pictures are a mess:

Lucky for you, I can plate a meal and brought this over to MrsForensicBBQ’s family

Chopped tomatoes, green pepper, onion, and shredded lettuce on the left. I cupped the jalapeno’s so the juices didn’t slide. Half of that tray was rice, so I put the lamb (top) and chicken (bottom) in the middle on top of the rice and then some sliced pita bread (heated on blackstone) on the far right side.

Surprisingly, I had very little left over. Not surprising because it was a delicious platter, but I was reasonably sure it would be too fancy of a plate for some. It was not, it was eaten nearly to completion. Stay tuned, I got a little bit of rice left and some sauces. What kind of rice-cart dish can I make with the leftovers? We’ll see!

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The Recipe