Paratha

Paratha (Hindustani pronunciation [pəˈɾaːnʈʰə], also parantha/parontah) is a flatbread native to the Indian subcontinent, with earliest reference mentioned in early medieval Sanskrit, India; prevalent throughout the modern-day countries of India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Maldives, Afghanistan, Myanmar, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand, Mauritius, Fiji, Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago where wheat is the traditional staple. It is one of the most popular flatbreads in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East.
Paratha is an amalgamation of the words parat and atta, which literally means layers of cooked dough. Alternative spellings and names include parantha, parauntha, prontha, parontay, paronthi (Punjabi), porota (in Bengali), paratha (in Odia, Urdu, Hindi), palata (pronounced [pəlàtà]; in Myanmar), porotha (in Assamese), forota (in Chittagonian and Sylheti), faravatha (in Bhojpuri), farata (in Mauritius and the Maldives), prata (in Southeast Asia), paratha, buss-up shut, oil roti (in the Anglophone Caribbean) and roti canai in Malaysia and Indonesia.
The word paratha is derived from Sanskrit (S. पर, or परा+स्थः, or स्थितः). Recipes for various stuffed wheat puran polis (which Achaya (2003) describes as parathas) are mentioned in Manasollasa, a 12th-century Sanskrit encyclopedia compiled by Someshvara III, a Western Chalukya king, who ruled from present-day Karnataka, India. References to paratha have also been mentioned by Nijjar (1968), in his book Panjāb under the Sultāns, 1000–1526 AD when he writes that parathas were common with the nobility and aristocracy in the Punjab.
According to Banerji (2010), parathas are associated with North Indian cooking. The method is to stuff parathas with a variety of stuffings. However, Banerji states, the Mughals were also fond of parathas which gave rise to the Dhakai paratha, multilayered and flaky, taking its name from Dhaka in Bangladesh. O'Brien (2003) suggests that it is not correct to state that the paratha was popularised in Delhi after the 1947 partition of India, as this item was prevalent in Delhi before then.
Parathas are one of the most popular unleavened flatbreads in the Indian subcontinent, made by baking or cooking whole-wheat (atta) dough on a tava, and finishing off with shallow-frying. Plain parathas are thicker and more substantial than chapatis/rotis because they have been layered by coating with ghee or oil and folded repeatedly, much like the method used for puff pastry or a laminated dough technique, and as a result have a flaky consistency. Stuffed parathas may include a wide variety of ingredients and be prepared in a variety of styles, traditionally depending on region of origin, and may not use folded dough techniques.
A number of traditional techniques are used to achieve the layered dough for plain parathas. These include covering the thinly rolled-out pastry with oil, folding back and forth like a paper fan and coiling the resulting strip into a round shape before rolling flat, baking on a tava and/or shallow frying. Another method is to cut a circle of dough from the center to its circumference along its radius, oiling the dough and starting at the cut edge rolling so as to form a cone which is then squashed into a disc shape and rolled out. The method of oiling and repeatedly folding the dough as in western puff pastry also exists, and this is combined with folding patterns that give traditional geometrical shapes to the finished parathas. Parathas can be round, heptagonal, square, or triangular.
Common fillings include mashed spiced potatoes (aloo paratha), dal, cauliflower (gobi paratha), and minced lamb (keema paratha). Less common stuffing ingredients include mixed vegetables, green beans, carrots, other meats, leaf vegetables, radishes, and paneer. A Rajasthani mung bean paratha uses both the layering technique together with mung dal mixed into the dough. Some stuffed parathas are not layered, lacking in the flakiness of plain parathas, and instead resemble a filled pie squashed flat and shallow-fried, using two discs of dough sealed around the edges. Alternatively, they can be made by using a single disc of dough to encase a ball of filling and sealed with a series of pleats pinched into the dough around the top; they are then gently flattened with the palm against the working surface before being rolled into a circle.
The paratha is an important part of a traditional breakfast from the Indian subcontinent. Traditionally, it is made using ghee but oil is also used. Some people may even bake it in the oven for health reasons. Usually, the paratha is eaten with dollops of white butter on top of it. Common side dishes are curd, fried egg, omelette, mutton kheema (ground mutton cooked with vegetables and spices), nihari, jeera aloo (potatoes lightly fried with cumin seeds), daal, and raita as part of a breakfast meal. It may be stuffed with potatoes, paneer, onions, qeema or chili peppers.