Kataifi Shredded Dough Recipe

Kataifi is pastry in very fine threads, cooked from a thin batter on a hot plate and used for knafeh and for the filling of Dubai chocolate. To make it at home, whisk flour, cornstarch, water and a little oil into a thin batter, squeeze it in fine lines onto a warm non-stick pan and lift the threads off after about a minute, before they colour.

What kataifi is

Kataifi, kadayif, kadaif and kataïf are spellings of one word, from the Arabic qata'if. Wikipedia's article describes a family of Middle Eastern pastry products and says the word now mostly means the fine shredded pastry dough used in desserts such as knafeh. The strands resemble vermicelli. They are made from a thin batter poured through fine openings onto a heated rotating griddle, where it cooks into hair-like threads, and are sold fresh, refrigerated or frozen. Desserts made from them are typically baked or fried, then soaked in sugar syrup.

In English it is often called shredded or spun filo, as in Wikipedia's article on Dubai chocolate, a bar filled with chopped kadayif and a pistachio and tahini cream that was created in 2021 and became widely known in 2024. By the description above, kataifi is poured as a batter and not cut from sheets.

Recipe

Kataifi Shredded Dough

Homemade kataifi, also spelled kadayif — a thin batter of flour, cornstarch, water and oil cooked in fine threads on a non-stick pan. About 9 ounces of pastry threads; the nutrition figure is for 1 ounce.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

10 min

Cook

30 min

Total

55 min

Serves

9

Cuisine

Middle Eastern

Ingredients

• 1 cup all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 1/4 cups water
• 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

Instructions

1. Whisk the flour, cornstarch and salt in a bowl. Add the water and the oil and whisk until smooth, or blend for 20 seconds. The batter should run like cream.
2. Pour the batter through a fine sieve into a squeeze bottle with a narrow tip and let it rest for 15 minutes.
3. Heat a non-stick frying pan over medium-low heat, without oil. Squeeze the batter into the pan in thin lines, moving the bottle quickly in circles, until the base is covered with a loose web of threads.
4. Cook for 30 to 60 seconds, until the threads look dry and matt and lift at the edges but have not coloured. Gather them up with a spatula and lay them on a plate under a damp towel.
5. Wipe the pan with a dry paper towel and repeat with the rest of the batter, shaking the bottle now and then. Use the kataifi the same day, or wrap it and refrigerate it.

Nutrition

Calories:

90

Calculated from the ingredient quantities above using the USDA FoodData Central database, then divided by the number of servings. It is an estimate and will vary with the exact products you use.

Getting the kataifi threads thin

• A narrow tip. An opening of about 1 millimetre: a squeeze bottle for sauces, or a piping bag with only the very point cut off. A wide opening gives noodles.
• A fast hand. The faster the bottle moves, the thinner the thread.
• A batter like cream. If it comes out in thick ropes, whisk in a teaspoon of water. If the lines break up into drops, whisk in a teaspoon of flour.
• Medium-low heat and a dry pan. The threads should set without browning. If they colour within seconds, take the pan off the heat for a minute.
• A strained batter. One lump blocks the tip.

Bought kataifi and homemade

The bought product comes off a machine, through fine openings onto a rotating griddle, and its strands are longer and more even than a squeeze bottle can draw. Homemade kataifi is for the kitchen with no shop nearby that stocks it.

Frozen kataifi is thawed in its wrapping in the refrigerator overnight, so that it does not dry out.

Toasting kataifi in butter

For the crunch in a Dubai chocolate filling, the threads are cut short and fried in butter.

1. Cut 3.5 ounces (100 g) of kataifi into pieces about 1/2 inch long.
2. Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a frying pan over medium heat and add the kataifi.
3. Stir for 8 to 10 minutes, until the threads are evenly golden brown and crisp.
4. Tip them onto a plate at once, because they go on browning in the hot pan.

Let the kataifi cool before it is mixed with pistachio cream. The Dubai chocolate bar on this site takes it from there.

Keeping kataifi from drying out

Raw kataifi dries and turns brittle within minutes in the open air, which is why the cooked threads wait under a damp towel. Wrapped airtight, it keeps 2 days in the refrigerator or 2 months in the freezer. Toasted kataifi keeps a week in a closed jar at room temperature.

Recipes with kataifi on this site

Besides the bar, toasted and salted kataifi tops the Dubai chocolate matcha latte. Other Dubai chocolate recipes on this site are the Dubai chocolate covered strawberries and the Dubai donut.