Southern-ish chicken and rice naanini

Read Time: 13 minutes

Oh, and there might be some trademark drama that we stumble into along the way.

What is this sandwich?

Some might say this isn’t a sandwich, and I’d say they’re wrong.

This is a recipe where a comforting, savory, and creamy combo of chicken and rice is added inside of a naan-style flatbread along with shredded Monterey Jack cheese. Then a sauce made from cilantro, mayonnaise, garlic, lime juice, parmesan cheese, and a couple of other ingredients is drizzled on, and a bit more chopped-up cilantro is added to make sure things stay healthy. The flatbread is folded over on top of the components, and the whole sandwich is warmed through in a panini press.

This is a chicken and rice naanini.

I painted this promo for my chicken and rice naaninis. Hopefully I won’t get sued by whoever owns the trademarks!

What the heck is a naanini?

A naanini is not something I invented. This time, someone else is responsible.

I think a sandwich is a beautiful example of a cross-pollination of culture. All you need is a bread, a filling, some sauces to go with it and some texture, and that can come from anywhere. And I think that’s an embodiment of immigrants or somebody who has traveled, who have crossed borders before they have crossed streets.

Viraj Borkar – founder and Co-owner, Fonty’s Deli + Dukaan

Fonty’s has cards where the sandwich-making station is that helpfully describe to the person making the sandwiches how to create each one.

Cross section of a Fonty’s Kerala beef naanini, screen captured from the video above.

In the video, you might have heard Viraj Borkar mention that they will be trademarking the word naanini (timestamp in video: 32 seconds).

Naanini trademark dispute?

In a last-minute twist to the trademark drama, Bhoomi Modern Indian Grill closed on June 27th, 2026, but they have not abandoned their trademark request and claim on Instagram that they are looking for a new location.

Below, I have shared a screenshot of the trademark class that both companies applied for. IC stands for International Class, which is a way for the United States Patent and Trademark Office to organize goods or services used in trademark applications.

Bhoomi Modern Indian Grill’s trademark request is for IC 030, which is the category for “staple food,” narrowed down to sandwiches.

Fonty’s trademark request is for more generic categories dealing with shopping and cafe/catering services.

Again, I want to state that I’m not a trademark attorney, but it seems like Bhoomi Modern Indian Grill has a much cleaner stake on the name naanini in reference to sandwiches, specifically panini-style sandwiches, and it also mentions that their first use in commerce was July 30, 2025, and Fonty’s was a couple of months later, on September 6th.

Anyway, I’m not selling naanini’s, and I’m not charging you to use my recipe, so I think I’m safe to use the word here. Let’s tackle the next major component in this handheld.

What is chicken and rice?

It’s literally what it says: a dish made from chicken and rice. You’ve likely eaten chicken and rice because pretty much every culture around the world that has both rice and chicken available to them has some sort of chicken and rice pilaf or one-pot chicken plus rice dish or casserole. And many of the chicken and rice dishes around the world seem to share some form of the following ingredients and process.

• Chicken – bone-in or boneless, thighs or breasts or even legs.
• Rice – long grain or basmati or sometimes even a wild rice mixture
• Aromatics – onion, garlic, carrot, celery
• Liquid – chicken broth, stock, wine, or even just water
• Fats and spices – butter or olive oil, black pepper, paprika, cumin, saffron, or even curry powders

The process starts with browning the chicken in the pan, but you don’t fully cook it at this time; then either toast the rice or add the aromatics to the pan to soften. After that, the rice goes in with the liquid and parcooked chicken, and the fat and spices are added throughout the process. The dish is done when the chicken is fully cooked, and the rice has softened and absorbed a lot of the liquid.

This is the process for many recipes, like Spain or possibly Puerto Rico’s arroz con pollo and chicken and rice pilaf, and you’ll even find recipes for things like chicken and jollof rice similar to what might be made in Western Africa that call for the cooking process to be very similar but with more ingredients like tomatoes, ginger, and bell pepper.

These recipes go back hundreds of years, and we have culinary historians digging as far back into the origin of these chicken and rice recipes as they can, uncovering even older or alternate versions like Valencia rice, which apparently is a cousin of the Mexican version of Spain’s arroz con pollo.

I like rice. Rice is great if you’re really hungry and want two thousand of something.

Mitch Hedberg, rice comedian

In the Southeastern United States, we have chicken and rice-focused dishes like Country Captain, which includes tomato and curry powder. There’s South Carolina’s pleasantly named Chicken bog, which is sometimes called chicken pilau (or pileau or perlo) and includes smoked sausage and various spices.

There are even one-pot chicken and risotto recipes that have the same vibe as the recipe that I used to create my chicken and rice for this sandwich. Do not tell the Italians this, though.

What makes my version Southern-ish?

This is a hard question to answer.

There’s probably a whole lot of other people that are outside of the Southern US who are making something almost the same as this with chicken and rice. Regardless of whether it’s Southern-ish or not, it’s tasty and comforting, and I suggest you make it. But before we get to that, let’s talk about the bread.

Homemade naan

Naan comes from Central Asia or Persia, and in that area of the world, the word is simply a term to represent any type of bread. It is believed that naan migrated to the Indian subcontinent in the 1300s because that’s when it appeared in poet and scholar Amir Kushrau‘s notes. At that point, naan in Southern Asia was associated with the royals and wealthy society, and it wasn’t until the 1700s that regular citizens were eating naan. The first English use of the word naan appeared in William Tooke’s writings about travel. Tooke spelled the name of the bread as nan, but at some point later the word was adjusted to how we spell naan today.

Since naan contains yeast, it requires a bit of rise time, and naan recipes will specifically require yogurt and ghee or butter as some of the fat and moisture in the dough. Other than that, if you’re not attempting to create the most traditional naan, it’s much like making pizza dough. First, you combine ingredients into a dough, then you let it rise for a bit. After that, you can portion the dough and roll it out. Then naan in a home kitchen most often is cooked in a pan or on a griddle instead of being baked in an oven or tandoor.

Just like other flatbreads or flour tortillas, it’s easier to make circular shapes if you start with a ball of dough.

You can use some of the dough’s tackiness to help stretch it into shape.

Griddle the naan for 2 to 3 minutes per side and flip until you get some dark brown spots.

I’ve covered this many times when writing about flatbread and tortillas, but if you’re making flatbread on a pan or griddle, you absolutely cannot skip the final step where you rest your cooked naan in a folded-over clean kitchen towel. This step is part of the cooking process, and it helps to finish cooking the naan as well as softens the naan by steaming it under the towel.

Just like all other types of bread, the moment it is removed from the heat, the middle parts of the dough are still cooking. This is the same as the carryover cooking process when you cook large pieces of meat. The middle is still warm enough that if you immediately cut into the naan, it will not be finished with its process.

Find a clean kitchen towel and do not skip the final steaming step.

If you want to make garlic naan, you can paint melted butter and minced garlic on the exterior of the bread. But if you do this, swap out the kitchen towel and wrap the finished naan with aluminum foil instead.

A well-made naan is soft, pliable, and just a little bit puffy.

Here’s my naan recipe that I converted from my puffy flatbread recipe to contain yogurt and butter as the fat and some of the liquid/moisture in the dough. If you want to make this sandwich quickly, you should easily be able to find some flatbread or even naan at your local store and get started.

Southern-ish-style chicken and rice

This is a one-pot recipe that creates a savory, creamy, and comforting main dish that you could serve for dinner alongside a veggie side dish or two. Or you can be crazy like me and make a whole batch in order to use in sandwiches throughout the next few days. It works both ways.

If you do decide to make this recipe, I would suggest that you eat it as your main course when you first make it and then use the ample leftovers for naanini sandwiches.

For my chicken and rice recipe, I lean hard on the savoriness with extra Better Than Bouillon and MSG added when the broth is added. My personal favorite part of my chicken and rice recipe is the savory comfort, and I think these two optional additions do add something that helps the finished dish.

This is a great dish, and it reheats well too.

The base of this recipe is onion that’s sautéed in butter to get things started.

Remove the softened onions to a pan and cook the chicken pieces in batches to make sure you do not crowd the pan.

After the chicken has been parcooked, add it back to the pot with the onions and most of the other ingredients, including broth and rice.

The recipe itself is pretty easy. Cook some diced onions in butter, then remove them from the pot. Using a teaspoon of butter at a time, cook small batches of your 2 pounds of chicken pieces (I used thighs) cut into 1-ish inch pieces, with just a little salt and pepper. Cook the chicken about 3 minutes per side until it gets just a bit of browning and then remove the chicken to the bowl with the onions.

After the chicken is cooked, add all of the rest of your ingredients except for the heavy cream, parmesan cheese, and parsley into the pot still over medium heat and dump the onions and parcooked chicken back into the pot as well. Stir everything together, bring to a boil, reduce heat to low, and simmer with the cover on for 20 minutes.

Uncover the pot, add the cream, cheese, and parsley, and stir to combine. Serve and enjoy. Also, I’m not totally sure why I put the whole recipe instructions here because they’re also down in the full chicken and rice recipe and the full chicken rice naanini recipe as well. These are just paraphrased.

This is a big pot full of creamy rice and chicken goodness.

If you’re going to heat up a portion for a sandwich, you can do it in the microwave or a small pot with just a tablespoon or so of cream or broth.

Here’s what a forkful of tasty chicken and rice looks like.

When you make this recipe, it makes at least 6 portions, which might translate into more than 6 sandwiches, so you’re likely to have leftovers. Reheating works pretty well in the microwave or in a small pan, but I suggest you add a couple of teaspoons of cream, broth, or even water to help things stay moist. If you’re microwaving, just stir things up after heating with the liquid, and the chicken and rice should be just as moist and comforting as it was the first time.

Chicken and rice works great on its own, but it’s pretty fun in a sandwich as well.

Peruvian green sauce aka aji verde sauce

Aji green sauce is an old sauce that was possibly being made way back during the time of the Incas throughout the Andes mountain range. If you’re like me and you’re not up to date on your Inca Empire timeline, that means a version of Aji might go back as far as the early 1500s. The Incans called this sauce uchu, but the name has changed to Aji because the sauces are typically made from aji peppers.

Aji verde will differ from country to country and person to person, but in Peru, they mostly have turned the green sauce into a creamy sauce containing mayonnaise, sour cream, and parmesan cheese (or other types of grated cheese). This is my take on a Peruvian green sauce that contains a whole bunch of cilantro, small stems and all, jalapeños, garlic, lime juice, vinegar, oregano, and various other spices.

Here’s a quick map I whipped up showing the overlap of the Inca Empire with where Peru ended up. Aji peppers originated in Peru and Bolivia (which is just south of Peru).

In Peru, this aji verde will be drizzled on top of potatoes, meat, ceviche, and sandwiches. J. Kenji López-Alt has a vinegary Peruvian grilled chicken recipe with aji verde that I suggest you check out. I also drizzled some of the leftover sauce I made for this sandwich on top of an omelette that I made, and it was a fantastic addition.

I was looking around for some way to blast my chicken and rice filling for this naanini with both color and flavor, and this sauce hit the spot. If you’re one of those cilantro-tastes-like-soap people, I must apologize. You could try this recipe and replace the cilantro with Italian parsley, or you could pivot to a pesto recipe or even something totally different like a sun-dried tomato spread, and you’d still have a fantastic sandwich experience.

All ingredients go in a blender, and that’s the whole recipe. The hardest part is clean up.

This aji verde is fairly thin, but a little bit of time in the fridge thickens it.

Look at me attempting to stage a photo! I’ve said it before; I’ve definitely learned that taking photos of sauces is a difficult thing for food content creators.

Cheese