Mughlai Paratha is a Kolkata specialty: a paratha stuffed with a minced meat and egg mixture, then shallow fried into a rich, indulgent square. It sits apart from the dry griddle-cooked paratha family because it is not griddled at all but fried in a shallow pool of fat, and its filling is wet and eggy rather than a dry spiced vegetable. The angle is indulgence: a thin, stretched dough wrapped around beaten egg and spiced keema, fried until the casing is crisp and blistered and the interior is just set.
The build is closer to a filled pastry than a flatbread. A maida dough is made soft and rested long enough to be stretched rather than merely rolled, into a large thin sheet, sometimes worked translucent by hand. The filling is minced meat cooked with onion, ginger, garlic, chilli, and garam masala until dry, then combined with beaten egg and often raw chopped onion and coriander. The egg mixture is poured onto the center of the stretched dough and the four sides are folded over it to make a sealed rectangular packet, trapping the wet filling inside. It is lowered into shallow hot oil and fried on both sides, basted, until deep golden, with the egg cooking against the dough into a single layered slab. Good execution gives a crisp, bubbled exterior, distinct dough and set-egg layers when cut, and a filling that is moist and well spiced without raw egg. Sloppy versions are oil-logged and heavy from cool fat, leak at the folds because the dough tore or the seal failed, or hide a pale underspiced keema. It is cut into squares and served hot with a potato curry, salad, and a wedge of lime.
Variations are mostly about the meat and the seal. Mutton and chicken keema are both common; a vegetarian version swaps in egg and spiced vegetable. Some makers fold thicker for a bready bite, others stretch the dough almost paper-thin for a shattering crust. The potato curry it is traditionally plated with, aloo dum, is a substantial dish that deserves its own article rather than being crowded in here. The constant is the format: a stretched dough envelope around minced meat and egg, shallow fried, cut, and eaten hot.