BIRYANI- just calling out that name gives me the feeling of a party; with a huge handi of steaming biryani and wonderful friends and family devouring it. Whether it is a wedding, a banquet or just a simple lunch/dinner at home, biryani is a dish that a host loves to serve and guests love to eat!
Making a perfect biryani is both a science and an art, but it is in no way a long, tedious process where we need to slog in the kitchen for hours and hours. With a little bit of organisation and correct understanding of the dish, I think biryani is one of the easiest and tastiest dishes to cook.
Like any other traditional, homely dish, even biryani has several varieties and every house makes it a different way- every city and state have a secret recipe for it and it can be made with mutton, chicken, seafood or even vegetarian.
This is my version of a kofta biryani served with a quick mint raita- something I came up with in an attempt to cut the monotony of the usual chicken/mutton biryani. The recipe below is a standard recipe for a basic biryani which I use for chicken.
Serves: 3-4 persons.
Ingredients:
For the chicken koftas:
Chicken mince 500 gms
Ginger 1 inch piece
Garlic 6-7 cloves
Fennel seeds (saunf) 1 tbsp
Salt 1/2 tsp
Green chilli 1-2 nos.
For the gravy:
Oil 4 tbps
Whole garam masala
(cumin seeds,cardamom,cinammon,cloves,peppercorns) 1 tbsp
Ginger-garlic paste 1 and 1/2 tbsps
Tomatoes 1 large or 2 medium
Red chilli powder 1-2 tsps
Coriander powder 2 tsps
Turmeric powder (haldi) 1/4th tsp
Crushed black pepper 1/2 tsp
Cumin powder (jeera) 1/2 tsp
Yoghurt 1 cup
Water as required
Salt to taste
For the rice:
Note- The success of a good biryani is in the rice. Once you get the rice cooked to perfection, the biryani will turn out just right. Some people boil the rice with whole garam masala, I prefer only adding shahi jeera, salt and few drops of oil to the water.
Rice 3 cups
Salt a pinch
Shahi jeera 1 tsp
White vinegar or lemon juice 1/2 tsp
Water as required
Oil 2-3 drops
For the layers:
Clarified butter (ghee) 1/2 cup
Bay leaf 2 leaves
Fried onions 1 cup
Chopped coriander leaves as required
Chopped mint leaves 8-10 leaves
Chopped green chillies
Salt
Lemon juice
Garam masala powder
For the raita:
Yoghurt 2 cups
Dried mint 1 tsp
or fresh mint leaves 3-4 leaves (chopped)
Salt to taste
Cumin powder 1/4 tsp
Black pepper powder a pinch
Method:
- Wash the rice well (atleast 5 times) and put it in a vessel. Add lots of water and fill the vessel till the brim just like you would cook pasta. Add salt, shahi jeera, oil and vinegar/lemon juice. (The vinegar or lemon juice keeps the colour of the rice white and also helps the grains to be separate without getting mushy). Keep to boil. Keep an eye on the rice once it starts to boil and when you see the cooked rice coming and settling on the surface, take few grains and test it by pressing it gently with your finger. The rice should break into 2 or 3 without getting squishy. Turn off the gas and immediately strain the rice in a colander. Use a fork and fluff it up. Keep it aside to cool.
- Next, slice 2 large onions thinly. Heat a tbsp of oil in a pan and fry these with a pinch of salt and sugar. Make sure you stir the onions to get a uniform brown colour. Once the onions turn dark brown and caramelised. Take off on kitchen tissue and keep aside.
- For the koftas- using a food processor/dry grinder or mortar and pestle, mince the ginger,garlic,green chilli and fennel seeds together. Add this to the chicken mince along with salt and mix together gently. Do not over-mix.
- Take small portions of this mixture and shape into balls- the size can vary according to your choice. Make sure there are no cracks and the surface is smooth. Keep aside.
Note- There are 2 ways how you can cook the koftas. Either you shallow fry them in few tbsps of oil and keep aside or you drop the formed balls into the gravy and cook it in the gravy. But, this method can be risky as it requires a little bit of technique and you need to be gentle and patient; since I am a bit impatient, I used the former method and shallow fried my koftas and kept it aside till my gravy was ready.
- For the gravy- heat the oil and crackle whole garam masala. Add the ginger-garlic paste and fry for 2 minutes.
- Add chopped tomatoes and fry it well to get rid of any rawness.
- Add the red chilli powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder and water just to de-glaze the pan and cook all the masalas. Cover and simmer for 2 mins.
- Beat the yoghurt to make it smooth and add it to the gravy along with crushed black pepper, cumin powder and salt.
- Mix well and keep on medium heat for 5-8 mins till the liquid dries up and the gravy becomes thick.
- While it is getting thick, add the fried koftas in a single layer into the gravy. Cover and simmer.
- Make sure that the gravy becomes dry and it is not too liquidy.
- Turn off the gas.
- For the layers- take a degchi and grease it with clarified butter on the bottom.
- Place 2 bay leaves at the bottom of the greased degchi.
- Put a layer of rice on top of the bay leaf.
- Next, put a layer of the gravy, along with the koftas. You can first place the koftas and then top it with the gravy.
- I always make only 2 layers of rice with 1 layer of masala in the middle. So, I used half the quantity of rice for the bottom layer and topped it with the all of the gravy and koftas.
- Next, sprinkle the fried onions, chopped coriander leaves, mint leaves, pinch of salt, garam masala powder, salt, chopped green chillies and a tbsp of clarified butter.
- Top with the remaining rice and top it with a sprinkling of salt, lemon juice, chopped coriander leaves, mint leaves and garam masala powder, remaining fried onions and remaining clarified butter. Also, sprinkle little water- very little, just few drops of plain water on the top layer. This keeps the biryani moist.
- Now, cover the top of the degchi with aluminium foil tightly. Keep a lid on it. This will ensure that the steam is retained within the degchi.
- To give the biryani dum- place a griddle pan or normal, flat pan on the flame on high heat. Make sure the pan is a size bigger than your degchi. Once it is heated up, turn the flame to low and place your sealed degchi on the pan.
- Keep it on low heat for 20-25 minutes. To check, just lift the lid, and lift the foil only from the corner, just enough to peep. If you can see the steam coming out of the degchi, then you know the biryani has got dum.
- Turn off the heat and allow to rest for 5 minutes before unveiling and serving.
- To make the raita- beat the yoghurt until smooth and combine all the ingredients.
- To dish out the biryani, take out the foil carefully. Take a wide spoon and spoon out one corner of the biryani onto the platter first. Then carefully serve the remaining biryani with the koftas and masala equally distributed.
- Serve the biryani on a nice platter with the raita in a bowl on the side.
Tweaking Tips:
If you do not wish to make the koftas, just use boneless chicken, marinated with the kofta spices and follow the exact same recipe. Make sure you do not cut the chicken into small pieces and keep the pieces fairly large. Alternatively, you can also use bone-in chicken pieces or medium sized shrimps (prawns).
Happy Cookin' & Keep it stylish!!
No comments:
Post a Comment