For the past seven years, I have learnt various non-veg dishes but my all time favourite is the Chicken Biryani. And I do not use the same type of chicken in this either. This actually gives you a different taste everytime and believe me, it turns out great. When we were in UK, all our British friends would come home for dinner and ask for me to make a biryani. After chicken tikka, that surely is the national dish there. One of my friends husband worked for a good Indian restaurent and he used to say that the most popular rice dish was certainly Biryani. So I will try to give you my recipe for this delicious dish and you can try it out and let me know how it turned out.
Unlike all the other recipes, it’s not very straight forward as the chicken you will be using for this varies. I tend to make a biryani at home the next day after I have made a chicken curry. So it is indeed made from the leftover chicken curry from the previous day. Therefore there are some rules that one must follow before I start narrating the recipe.
If your chicken curry is spicy then do not add any more spice to the biryani. Just skip the spices part I will give in the next point to add in the oil. If on the other hand your chicken curry is mild, you might need to add some extra spice to make it as spicy as you like.
If your chicken curry is dry (it happens when people eat more curry and only the chicken pieces are left.) then I would suggest making a simple curry like on oil, add some onions and spice. Fry it till it becomes golden and then add chicken and fry some more. Now on this add little tomato puree and water and check the salt. If needed add more salt. I tend to use spices like biryani masala for this instead of any other Indian spices. So I add around one to two tsp of biryani masala to chicken and make a gravy.
If you have made a chicken tikka, even that’s fine as you can do the same thing and add some gravy to it. You can also make a gravy for barbequed chicken.
So now that you have some chicken curry from leftovers, let’s look at making the rice. I tend to use the rice cooker as it is very easy to make it in there without having to check every now and then as to how much it is cooked. So I add 1 cup of rice (if you have 1 bowl of chicken curry) and add 1 1/4 cup of boiling water with 1 tsp of oil to make sure the rice fluffs up and does not stick together. I also add a pinch of saffron and one cardamom to give the rice colour and taste.
Now once your rice is ready. I suggest taking a small pot with a lid in which you could layer the biryani. Now brush some oil to the pot (you can even brush it with butter if you like) and start with a layer of tomato rings at the bottom. Now add one layer of chicken and one layer of rice. Continue doing so till the end. Now make some holes in this biryani with a stick and add some milk (around 1 tsp in each hole, I make around 8-10 of them) Now cover the pot with a lid and I also rap around some silver foil so that the steam does not go out. Now keep a flat tawa on gas and let it heat up. Once it’s heated keep your pot on it and lower the flame to low setting. Now keep this on for 50-60 minutes and then remove the pot and keep it directly on the hob but with the flame switched off. This way with it’s heat let the biryani cook for another half an hour or so. After that remove the foil and serve this biryani hot. You can garnish it with some freshly chopped corainder leaves.
Note: You can even use an ovenware so that you could bake this biryani in the oven for 40-45 minutes on medium heat. If you are using the hot plates instead of a gas hob then you will have to adjust your heating time as in the hotplate you can not control the heating easily.
Hope you all enjoy this biryani. And do make it with lots of different types of chicken curries to give you different flavour every time. And this dish is a particularly favourite of my husband.
