Houston Area Chef Wins It All on ‘Chopped’ With Indian Street Food Creations

Camel milk and sardines were no obstacle for chef Jassi Bindra

Jassi Bindra, the executive chef behind the Woodlands luxe Indian restaurant, Amrina, hinted last week that his appearance on Chopped would do Indian cuisine justice, and sure enough, the chef, known for his eclectic spin on Indian cuisine, did not disappoint.

Bindra went on to win the episode, taking home $10,000 and bragging rights for the Houston area.

The chef appeared to go into the challenge with confidence, intending to use traditional recipes from India with his own eclectic touch. “I’m here to show how Indian cuisine can be sexy,” Bindra said, before facing off in the appetizer challenge against Massachusetts chef Emilie Rose Bishop, traveling celebrity chef Morgan Ferguson from Maryland, and Rachel McGill, the first James Beard Award-nominated chef from Lincoln, Nebraska.

At first glance at the four ingredients required to concoct an appetizer, “I feel great actually, and not great,” Bindra said. But the chef went on to spin the Brick French Toast soaked in egg custard, watermelon radishes, smoked peanut butter mixed with Mexican hatch chiles, and canned sardines into mirchi walla, an Indian street feed that’s a stuffed pepper. Bindra stuffed poblano peppers with sardines and portobello mushrooms and topped them with a cheddar cheese fondue that used the peanut butter and panko bread crumbs. Judges had their doubts, with one questioning his use of peppers. “If he can pull that off, I will be so impressed,” said another, and Bindra pulled through, impressing the judges with layered flavors despite the dish’s large portion and lack of texture.

The chef resolved that he’d take the judges’s feedback into consideration for the entree round, when chefs were given 30 minutes to make an entree using a potato chip omelet, pea greens, raw Korean-style short ribs, and cherry cola. Bindra’s grilled short ribs with a pea green salad and Cola-coconut sauce, plated with a liquid egg mousse, was enough to get to the dessert round, where he sealed his win by transforming a giant fortune cookie, gooseberries, blue Hubbard squash, and camel milk into a fortune cookie Rabri, a popular Indian sweet dessert made with condensed milk with sugar, and combining it with candied squash and gooseberries. Though judges said the squash component in the dish was underwhelming, the dessert was still enough to win judges over.