This is a quick and simple recipe for a nice and tasty chicken biryani. Normally for a Biryani dish there is a lot of emphasize on using fresh ingredients, especially fresh coriander, mint, onions, tomatoes, etc.
Many times we may not have all the ingredients in the pantry or at home. That should not mean we cannot have nice home cooked Biryani. Using only dry spices for 90% of the recipe, we are going to see how to cook an awesome Biryani.
I am going to keep it simple for this one. First I’ll list all the spices, quantity and then the step by step instruction. Lets get started.
Ingredients
- Pan 1 with lid, large enough to hold chicken and cooked rice together
- Pan 2 with lid, large enough to boil 10 cups of water
- Chicken Thighs with bone, skin removed, cut into 2 pieces each – 2 lbs
- 2 cups good quality Basmati rice, washed and soaked in cold water for at least 1/2 hour
- Dry Spices
- 1 Bay leaf
- 6 Whole Elaichi pods
- 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
- 2 tbsp ground chilli powder
- 1 tbsp ground black pepper
- 2 count Star Anise pods
- 1 tbsp garam masala powder
- 1 tbsp dry ginger powder
- 1 tbsp dry garlic powder
- 1 tbsp dry onion powder
- 2 tbsp dried crushed mint leaves
- 2 tbsp dried crushed parsley leaves
- 1 tsp table salt
- 8 tbsp fried onions
- 8 tbsp fried onions
- 2 large tomatoes
- 2 cups yogurt
- 1 yellow lemon
- 1 cup oil
- Salt to taste
Steps
Now lets look at the steps
Take the chicken pieces in Pan 1
Add all the dry spices in the order specified above
Add some oil and mix well.
Add yogurt and fried onions
Add the cut tomatoes and mix well
In Pan 2 add 8 cups water and 3 tbsp table salt and bring to boil. This is for the basmati rice to cook up to 80% that would then be added to the chicken biryani masala below.
Coming back to the chicken mix, move Pan 1 to a medium flame and let it cook the chicken and masala until half done. It should look like below. If the chicken is cooking quickly then turn off the stove when its half done or when oil starts to separate. Add a little salt if needed.
Once the water in Pan 2 is boiling, slowly add the washed and soaked rice and cook for about 3 to 5 minutes. The rice should be over double the size of raw rice, and should break easily when pressed. Once it reaches that stage, turn off the stove for Pan 2.
Now using a slotted spoon or a slotted kitchen colander scoop spoon, take the rice from Pan 2 and layer over the cooked chicken in Pan 1. Do so in batches while the rice is still hot. Once all the rice is transferred, you can add some Rose water and saffron soaked in milk, if required. Add some of the fried onions on top of the rice, close Pan 1 using its lid and let it simmer on low heat for about 15 minutes. Discard the water in Pan 2 once its cold.
After 15 minutes, turn of the stove and let the biryani sit for about 10 minutes before opening the lid. Once opened the biryani could look like below.
Gently mix the Rice with cooked meat and masala that is in the bottom of the pan, starting from one corner of the pan and plate it like shown below. Biryani is usually served with a boiled egg and raita is optional. When the Biryani is so tasty you wont need anything else to go along with it.
Enjoy and let me know how it turned out in the comments section.