Some of the tips you have mentioned are really good and adds to the tricks of making a great biryani!! I never knew the trick of making Crisp onions to be added as a top layer in a biryani.

Also please note : We were completely unsuccessful when we tried making Biryani in the oven. We used a cooking tray with the entire biryani prep and covered it with Aluminum foil.(200 deg F). It simply doesn’t work – the rice never boils or get cooked even after 40 mins. Avoid oven cooking completely!!

Thanks Shilpa for a great recipe for making Biryani.

cheers
Badri

Kutchi is the type that is always favored in my family as the Pakki type has somewhat lower respect. A perfect Biryani has the meat done just right-fully cooked but juicy, neither too hard nor too soft; rice grains remaining separate and fluffy after cooking, and the entire house fills with the unmistakable aroma of Biryani as the sealed pot is opened just before serving, declaring an ambience of festivity. I will give away a few of our family’s Biryani secrets today for the benefit of fellow Biryani buffs.

1. Basmati is the rice of choice. Seeks out rice that was harvested a year or two earlier. It is easy in India but may not be feasible in the US. Older rice has lower moisture content, and therefore, more suitable for Biryani as it absorbs more gravy with oil/butter oil/ghee, and tends to be less sticky. In any case, the rice must be rinsed thoroughly before boiling to remove any loose starch clinging to the surface. Do at least 5 changes of water, and soaks the rice in water or milk for 2 hours or so before boiling. Soaking will give surprisingly longer grains. A small piece of Alum (potassium aluminum sulfate) thrown into the boiling water helps to keep the rice grains separate but it is not recommended for health concerns.

While boiling the rice, the water must be sufficiently seasoned with salt and spices! Use cardamom, cloves, mace, and bay leaves among other things, all tied in small bag of cheesecloth. Salting in the boiling water will season the rice fully, and the Biryani will not taste bland. The spice bag is removed after draining the rice.

2. Goat meat is preferred but lamb or chicken is also very much doable. It is doable with fish too but that is another story. Choose younger goat if possible. Avoid small pieces of meat by all means as they become hard and dry at the end. Ideally, the meat pieces should be 4 to 6 oz in size to keep them succulent. Marinade the meat in the fridge for 8 to 12 hours. If you start the marinade the night before, that should take care of this long marinating time. Yogurt and raw papaya paste are musts in the marinade when you cook with goat meat or lamb. They both tenderize the raw meat sufficiently. Papaya paste is generally not needed when cooking with chicken but use yogurt anyway.

How much meat to use? The original recipes suggest twice the wait of rice. For example, use 2 lbs of goat meat will go with 1 lb of rice. You may reduce the amount of meat to economize but you will earn a bad name if you try less than 1 lb meat for 1 lb of rice. Plan for 8 ounces of meat per adult person. Don’t do Biryani but do something else to please your guests when cost is an issue. Biryani is never inexpensive. It costs a heck of time and money.

3. The fragrance of Indian ghee can not be mimicked by butter oil or vegetable oil. Years back, ghee was the only way to go in my family when cooking Biryani. With new focus on heart health, everything has changed. We now do ½ ghee and ½ vegetable oil. We also do all vegetable oil at times with great sadness. But hey, there is a trade-off in everything in life!

4. Use a lot of fried onions while layering your Biryani. More is better so far as fried onion in Biryani is concerned. I prefer shallots whenever available, instead of the common large onions. This is simply because shallots are easier to fry to a crisp texture. Here is a very useful trick for preparing the perfectly caramelized onions that are crisp, and can be crushed by hand for using between the layers of your Biryani. Use a slicer so that all onion slices are of equal thickness. This will ensure that they all brown equally and at the same time. Sprinkles the onion slices with a good dose of common cane sugar immediately before frying in deep oil. Uses medium heat and never leaves them unattended, especially towards the later stage of frying when they brown all too quickly, and burn before you can act. As you drain and cool them over paper towel, they will start to become crisp and brittle. Make some extra that you can use in other cooking. The oil gets a fragrance from the fried onions that you can use in the Biryani.

5. The moisture for cooking Biryani comes from the meat and marinade. As no extra water is added, these are the only two sources of steam for further cooking the ¾ th cooked rice and the raw meat. The measurement is simple, and it works every time: yogurt and other marinades combined must drown the layered raw meat at the bottom of the pot by one digit of your finger. That’s all you need. If it is more, you will have a gooey stuff. If it is less, you will have an undercooked stuff. Tricky, isn’t it?

6. Heat and moisture are two important variables that need to be properly controlled to get acceptable results. Always seal the pot’s cover by some mechanism after the casserole is set prior to cooking. I use dough made with all-purpose flour/atta to seal the lead, and then place a heavy object on top such as a cast iron pot or skillet to secure and maintain the seal in a tight fix. It always works. I have read about sealing with aluminum foils etc. but have no experience to comment. Start with high heat, and continue high heat until steam starts to escape through the dough seal. Lower the temperature immediately to low/medium low depending on your stoves BTU capacity. How long to cook? It will always depend on how much food you are cooking. But here is the clue: you need to stop cooking as soon as all moisture is absorbed inside the sealed pot. You can sense that by “listening” to your pot as it cooks. As long as you have moisture inside, you will hear a rustling sound. The sound will stop when all moisture is gone.

7. Never cook Biryani in an ordinary pot. The infamous Biryani experience is when you open your sealed pot in front of a couple of hungry friends and family members and all you are able to serve is some scorched meat with rice! You need a heavy pot that retains and distributes heat well, and has no hot spot. If possible, use an old fashioned heavy copper pot with tight fitting lid for Biryani cooking. If not, use any other heavy duty pot. I use an All-Clad 8 quart pot that works quite well.

8. Biryani owes its aroma to the spices and ghee used and the unique cooking method in a sealed pot. I never cook without using plenty of nutmeg/mace, clove, cardamom, black cumin (kala zira/Bunium persicum) and saffron. Some cooks use yellow food color in exchange of saffron. You may try but obviously get only what you pay for.

Bonn Appetite!

Thank you for the lovely step by step description of the recipe. I haven’t tried it yet but planning to make it this weekend, hopefully.
I think this is definitely better than using lots of readymade Biryani Mix masala’s (Everest, Baadshah etc) that make it too fragrant. Few people may like it too fragrant but not for too long:) just like how I got bored with the Biryani Mix masala’s. And I’ve always tried layers with cooked meat.

Will let you know how it comes out.

Thanks!