This one is not from my moms diary but its from my aunts , thats is my moms sister (Sheela) I call her Maa. .She is an expert in cooking biryani and i am one of her countless fan her biryani has. Maa dose it with so ease and that makes me thinks that preparing biryani shouldnt be tough and that is what made me try this .Intially i was not very good at it but now i love cooking and serving biryani .Thanks to maa who constantly encourages me to cook specially biryani. Thanks Maa.
Comming to biryani there are numerous variation and all the variety differs and i think king of biryani is hyderabadi biryani. The way the aroma , rice and the meat gets blended is real wonderfull. All those who have tasted hyderabadi biryani will surely vouch for it , its very royal and very aromatic. There are two types of biryani , first being the kachi (raw)dum (slow cooked in the steam )biryani , and the other one being the paccki (cooked)biryani . The first where in the meat (chicken or lamb) is raw and gets cooked in the process, the second one per say is where we used boiled or cooked meat.The Kacchi or raw biryani is very famous but both taste good.
Todays menu is kacchi (raw) chicken biryani with raitha .
Item Chicken Biryani
source : Maa (my aunt)
Time : 1hrs 30min.
Ingredients ::
- 2 cups Baskmati rice
- 1lb chicken de-skined
Step 1: frying onions :
- 3-4 big onions sliced finely and deep fried to brown in colour.
- oil
Step 2 : Marination of chicken
- 500gms of chicken
- 2 cups curd
- 4 -5 tsp of freshly ground ginger garlic paste
- whole garam masala ( 1inch cinnamaon stick, 4-5 cardamon,1 big black cardamon, 5-7 cloves, bay leaf . shahi-jeera, aniseed )
- 1-1/12 tsp garam masala powder
- 1tsp of coriander powder,
- 1tsp of chilli powder,
- Salt
- Turmeric
- 1 medium sized tomato
- 1 bunch of mint leaves ( 8-12 strands )
- 1 bunch of cilantro (coriander leaves)
- 7-10 green chillies
- lime juice from 3-4 medium sized limes
- Saffron colour
- Fried onions. ( half of from the step 1 )
- oil . (can use the same oil used for frying)
Take the chicken in a big vessel (the vessel u want to cook biryani) and add all the above ingredients and mix well. Crush the fried onions and add it to the marinate. Cool the oil that wass used to fry onions and add about 50-100 ml of it . keep it marinated for 30-40 mins.
Step 3 : Preparing the Rice
- 2 cups basmati rice (soked for 30 mins prior use )
- 1-1/12 cup water ( chicken stock can be used , or coconut milk can be used instead of water )
- salt
- whole garam masala
- Mint leaves
- coriander leaves
- saffron color
- 3-4 spoon of oil
Wash and Soak the basmati rice 30 mins prior to the use in a pressure cooker ( u can opt for not using the cooker and cook in a regular vessel but cooked in a tradional way , where u have to keep monitoring for the rice to be cooked upto 60-70% , we donot want the rice to be completely cooked ) cooking in a pressure cooker makes the process easy and fast. To the rice add 1-1 1/2 cup of water or chicken stock . T;o it add the whole garam masala , mint leaves coriander leaves and salt . add a pinch of saffron colour. Keep it on medium flame with out the pressure weight .Allow the rice to cook only 70%. Put the flame off when the steam starts gushing out wait for couple of minutes and then open the cooker.
Step 4 : Layering the rice.
- Saffron colour diluted in about 4-5 spoon ful of water or milk.
- lime juice from 2-3 lime
- 50 ml of oil
- mint and criander leaves
- Fried onions.
Once the rice is ready , carefully layer it on the marinated chicken. Top it with saffron colour , lime juice . mint and coriander leaves, oil and fried onions . Close the vessel with the tight glass lid so that the steam dose not escape if u dont have a vessel with glass lid the u can use regular lid but u have seal the lid with chapathi dough so that the steam dosent escape and Keep the biryani on medium flame .
Step 5 : Cooking the biryani
This is the most important step . Here is when the glass lid comes in handy , when the biryani get cooked on medium heat , u can see the vapour droplets forming on the glass lid (which will take around 15-20 mins) leave it in the same stage for another 5-10 mins and then reduce the flame now keep a griddle underneath your biryani vessel ( i forgot to take the pic will update it soon ) and leave it to be slowly cooked for another 20-30 mins . If u dont have the the glass lid then what u can do all the checking manually , check after 20- 30 mins and then keep the griddle under the biryani vessel. The time will differ with the quantity of biryani.. Once its done its ready to be served .
Enjoy the royal aromatic delicious biryani with raitha.
