Packed with layers of rice, spice, meet and herbs, biryani is one of the most favourite dishes served across India to Indonesia. This South Asian dish can take your tongue to a delicious journey in seconds. As magnificent as biryani can be, the culinary behind this is also an exciting journey. Let us guide you throughout, how you can make chicken biryani in ease of your home.

Let’s talk some more about Biryani:

This magnificence South Asian rice dish consist of preparing aromatic rice which has spice layering of meat, vegetable and herbs. This is loved deeply across many Asian countries like India, Bangladesh, etc. Though it has hundreds of regional varieties. It involves many steps typically marinating the meat with yogurt and then spicing the parboiling rice with the whole spices, and after that it is combined with the saucy meat. It can cover the fragmented rice in many distinct layers, which depend on the particular culinary technique.

A short history of Biryani:

It is a very popular culture in India of eating seasoned rice dishes from a long time. Though, the Biryani we are talking about has its origin back from the time of Mughal Emperors. It is believed that they made the first biryani while combining Indian spiced rice dishes with the Persian pilaf. Intended to make a unique dish for emperor, which ended up being our most famous Biryani.

Although it is a matter of question as Mughals ruled by the north of India but biryani is more popular in the southern region. Well… there’s also a good explanation. As southern people in India eats more rise and meat then northern habitats, the origin for this glorious dish can be claimed by such. It came from Persian word biriyan, though the word biryani is Urdu. It means ‘fried’.

Ingredients for making Chicken Biryani:

Rice: For making biryani, long grain aromatic rice like basmati is the best. Though if you are making biryani traditionally, you could use more rice variants that are available locally like aromatic, short grained seeraga samba or jeerakasala (aka kaima) or You can use golden sella rice.

Meat: marinated chicken meat is used for this variant of biryani.

Vegetables: Fried onion slices are one of the typical ingredients in biryani or it can be called a feature. Though most of the ingredients like tomato, chilli, ginger paste or fresh garlic-ginger paste need to be used to marinate the meat.

Spices: As we told again and again, this superb dish features whole as well as ground spices. That includes spices like nutmeg, mace, cloves, peppercorns, cinnamon, coriander, cardamom, rose water, saffron, Bay leaf, garam masala, screwpine water and red chilli powder.

Herbs: Curry leaves, Cilantro and mint, can be added while marinading.

Ghee: Added for more taste over the rice.

Yogurt: Many fermented dairy products like the Dahi/doi or yogurt can be used in marination to tenderise the meat.

Toppings: Nuts such as cashews or almonds are one of the very common biryani toppings.

Tips for making Chicken Biryani:

1. The older the rice will be better. Long-grained, aromatic basmati rice which is two years old, are perfect for making any kind of biryani.

2. Smooth, non-sticky rice where the grains are separable will be needed to be used. Change the water 3 to 4 times for removing excess starch from the rice. At least for 20 minutes before cooking, keep the rice soaking for that whole time.

3. Now infusing flavours into the rice. It’s very interesting process. You could do it by parboiling the rice with spices such cumin seeds, black peppercorns, cardamom pods, whole cloves and bay leaf. While you are infusing these flavours remember the boiling water in which you’re cooking your rice, is well seasoned with salt too. One point for your preference, that if you don’t want to have the spices here and there in your finished dish, you can tie them in a cheesecloth sachet.

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4. Parboiling rice will involve boiling the rice in water 2-3 times. Remove couple of grains from there to check if they are boiled enough. To check the perfect balance, take that couple of gains and break them into 2 pieces. If they are boiled enough, they will break into two pieces and yet they would be looking firm. If the grain breaks into 3 or even more pieces then maybe the rice is overcooked. You could start over again with adjusting the cooking time.

5. Use some heavy bottom pot like Dutch oven. Remember that this cookware will be used to streaming the food for long time, so thin cookware can cause scorched rice.

6. The quantity and type of meat and vegetables used in biryani makes it longer or shorter time to steam. Let’s also give you a quick example, chicken breasts can dry out quickly if you cook for too long.