Chicken momos

Throughout the lockdown, I have felt quite happy at home. I feel like there’s no place I would rather be. Just that it would be really nice if my home was on a farm or better still in the mountains.

And my way to bring the mountains to my haven in the not-so-bustling-anymore city of New York is making some momos and chai.

When Neel and I went to Assam and Sikkim, we thrived on momos and Thupka for breakfast and dinner at our hotel. During the day we we would go on hikes and excursions and mostly ended up eating spicy maggi from roadside stalls and called it lunch. Of Course for me, the exquisite tea there was an accompaniment for every meal and a couplemore cups in between 😛 !

L: My Daily breakfast in Sikkim/ Assam – Momos and Thupka;
R: Neel and me at Lake Tsongmo

I can never make up my mind between chicken momos and Veg momos, I think I like both! The recipe below is for Chicken momos, and here’s the one for veg momos.

You will need:

For the outer coating/Dough:

2 cup all purpose flour/ Maida (I used 1 cup APF and 1 cup atta, hence the color is not as white)

Salt to taste

Water as required

For the Chicken Filling:

1 lb ground chicken – I used ground chicken breast

3-4 stalks of green onion, finely chopped

2 tbsp chopped coriander

salt to taste

1 tsp dark soy sauce

1.5 tbsp ginger-garlic paste

1-2 tsp finely chopped green chillies – optional

For the Momo Chutney:

2 large tomatoes – chopped tomatoes

6-8 dried red chilies – soaked in hot water for 1 hour

Salt to taste

3-4 garlic cloves

Procedure:

Mix the flour, water and salt and knead into a soft pliable dough. Let it rest for at least 20 minutes.

Wash the ground chicken and drain well. To the chicken add all the seasonings and spices and mix well, set aside.

After resting the dough, lightly dust a surface with some flour and take manageable portions of the dough at a time and roll it out thin. I made 4 balls from my dough. The size would depend on how large your rolling surface is.

The thickness should be about 1-2 mm not thicker than that.
With a cookie cutter cut circles – about the size of your palm
In the center of each circle place about a tablespoon of the chicken filling and seal the edges to shape a momo.
There are many different designs you can make. Choose whichever is convenient and easy.
I like this one because its very easy to make, stands up stably in the steamer and can hold a lot of filling!

While making the monos, start heating water in your steamer. You can either use an idli steamer or steam it on a flat strainer placed over a boiling pot of water.
Light oil the surface that comes in contact with the momos place the Nokia spaced apart as they puff and expand as they steam.
Steam the momos for 15- 20 minutes in the steamer.