HALAL CART FAVORITE
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You can make this popular order from the Halal Guys in your own kitchen. The combo platter — $9.99 for a large — blends rice, veggies and your choice of chicken, beef or falafel.
Start by cooking the rice for about 16 minutes. Right before it’s done, season it with a bit of saffron, turmeric, salt and pepper — the turmeric being key.
“It really brightens [the rice] up and brings that fun red color to it,” said Shawn Edelman, the Halal Guys’ 49-year-old corporate executive chef.
Prepare the salad while the rice cooks. Mix chopped-up iceberg lettuce, peeled-and-diced plum tomatoes, a chopped green bell pepper and a chopped white Spanish onion (washed under cold water and squeezed to remove the alkaline taste). Next, arrange the rice and salad on separate halves of a plate.
Marinate chicken thigh meat for a few hours in the refrigerator with olive oil, and less than a ¹/₄ tablespoon each of salt, pepper, turmeric, garlic powder and ginger powder. Briefly sear both sides of the chicken on high heat, then lower the heat to cook the rest of the way. Then dice it up and put it under pita bread to retain the moisture. Slightly easier: beef, which you can buy ground and blended with the same spice combination while cooking it, like you would a taco mix. Even easier: falafel, which you can buy ready to eat in most grocery stores.
Halal Guys’ devotees adore its white (creamy) or red (spicy) sauces. Like the marinade spice blend, recipes for these are proprietary, but you can whip up similar versions. For the white sauce, add the same spices for the chicken and beef to Greek low-fat yogurt before splashing in some lemon juice. For the red, plain Sriracha will do as a substitute.
For the past 15 years, Brooklynite Paul Hill told The Post, he would order the “half and half” (half chicken, half lamb, over rice) about five to six times a month from the iconic cart at Sixth Avenue and West 53rd Street. But since the COVID-19 pandemic largely confined New Yorkers to their homes, the Bushwick-based videographer has only made the trek twice.
On Aug. 14, he posted a video of his coronavirus-era second order on Twitter, and racked up hundreds of comments from folks lamenting how much they miss the street meat.
“I’ve tried halal [food] at other places, but it doesn’t really compare, so I don’t want to waste my money,” said Hill, 32. “Whatever they put in the secret white sauce is amazing. I don’t trust myself to make it. I’d rather travel every time. I’ll risk it.”