isithalal.food · Recipes

Halal cart chicken and rice

New York halal-cart chicken over yellow rice with the creamy white sauce and a hot red sauce, made with Halal chicken and a white sauce you mix yourself.

American · Main · Easy · 4 platters · 120 min

Each method follows published technique for the dish, and every Halal substitution is checked against the ingredient pages we cite. Photographs come from our ingredient library rather than the finished dish.

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Why Halal checks matter here

The halal-cart platter is named for its Halal meat, but at home the chicken, the stock and any bought sauces are what decide it.

Halal-critical ingredients

• Chicken: Supermarket chicken outside Muslim-majority countries is not Halal-slaughtered unless it says so. Use a Halal butcher or a certified pack. See Chicken.
• Chicken stock: Stock cubes and pastes can contain chicken fat or extract from birds that were not Halal-slaughtered. Use a Halal-certified stock, or cook the rice in water with salt. See Stock cubes.
• Vinegar in the white sauce: Many cart-style recipes use white distilled vinegar, and scholars differ on spirit vinegar. This version uses lemon juice instead. See Vinegar.

Ingredients

Chicken

• 800 g (1¾ lb) Halal boneless chicken thighs
• 45 ml (3 tbsp) lemon juice
• 30 ml (2 tbsp) olive oil
• 10 g (2 cloves) garlic, crushed
• 2 g (1 tsp) dried oregano
• 2 g (1 tsp) ground coriander
• 1 g (½ tsp) ground cumin
• 6 g (1 tsp) fine salt
• 1 g (½ tsp) black pepper, ground

Yellow rice

• 300 g (1½ cups) long-grain or basmati rice
• 30 g (2 tbsp) butter
• 2 g (1 tsp) ground turmeric
• 1 g (½ tsp) ground cumin
• 450 ml (2 cups) Halal chicken stock, or water and salt

White sauce

• 120 g (½ cup) mayonnaise
• 120 g (½ cup) plain Greek yogurt
• 15 ml (1 tbsp) lemon juice
• 5 g (1 tsp) sugar
• 1 g (½ tsp) black pepper, ground
• 1 g (1 tsp) dried parsley
• 1 g (pinch) fine salt

To serve

• 150 g (3 cups) iceberg lettuce, shredded
• 2 (2) tomatoes, diced
• 2 (2) pita breads, warmed and cut into wedges
• to taste (to taste) harissa or chilli sauce, label-checked

Method

1. Marinate the chicken. Mix the lemon juice, olive oil, garlic, oregano, coriander, cumin, salt and pepper, and coat the chicken thighs. Chill for at least 1 hour, or overnight. Use Halal chicken: the cart's name promises Halal meat, and at home that promise is yours to keep.
2. Make the white sauce. Stir the mayonnaise, yogurt, lemon juice, sugar, pepper, parsley and salt together until smooth, then thin with a spoonful of water if you want it pourable. Chill until serving. Lemon juice gives it the tang that carts get from vinegar, without the vinegar question; Hellmann's and other mainstream mayonnaise is Halal on its ingredients.
3. Cook the yellow rice. Melt the butter in a pan, add the rice, turmeric and cumin and stir for 2 minutes until the grains are coated. Pour in the stock, bring to the boil, cover and simmer on low for 15 minutes. Rest off the heat, still covered, for 10 minutes. Stock cubes can contain chicken fat or extract from non-Halal birds, so use a Halal-certified stock or water and salt.
4. Griddle and chop the chicken. Heat a heavy frying pan or griddle until very hot. Cook the thighs for 5–6 minutes a side, until charred and 74 °C in the thickest part. Rest for 5 minutes, then chop into small pieces on the board, the way the carts do, and toss them in the pan juices.
5. Build the platter. Spoon rice into each bowl, top with the chicken, lettuce and tomato, and tuck in pita wedges. Pour over plenty of white sauce and add hot sauce to taste. A shop-bought chilli sauce or harissa is usually just chillies, oil, vinegar or lemon and spices; read the label for anything else.

Allergens

egg (mayonnaise), milk (yogurt, butter), gluten (pita)

How this recipe was researched

Method specified editorially from the New York halal-cart platter as described for The Halal Guys (chicken or gyro over rice with a white sauce and a red hot sauce), using common home technique: lemon-garlic-oregano chicken thighs griddled and chopped, turmeric-cumin rice cooked in stock, and a mayonnaise-yogurt white sauce. The Halal Guys' own sauce recipe is not published, so this is a home version, not theirs. Timings follow published technique rather than a kitchen test.

Photograph of a chicken-over-rice platter from Flickr, not the finished dish from this recipe.