22 Mar 2011

How to cook Chicken Biriyani


1. Gather around the ingredients – 1 onion, 1 tomato, 6 pearls of garlic, 1 inch ginger, 1 tbsp corriander leaves+ mint leaves and grind everything. Separately wash and slice 250 gms chicken. Wash and soak 250 gms of basmati rice (or what you think looks closest to basmati rice in your kitchen)

2. Heat 5 tbps oil + ghee combo in cooker. Decide to fry long-sliced onions in them to use for garnishing later on.

3. Get impatient and remove half fried onions. Put it in a separate pan for frying

4. To the oil in the cooker, add 1 inch cinnamon stick and 2 cloves. Watch it splatter onto your hand.

5. Jump around and wash hands. Notice long-sliced onions are burning. Dispose off into bin and begin to focus on the main biriyani itself.

6. Add the vegetable paste to the oil in the cooker. Add 1 tsp chilli powder, ¼ tsp coriander powder, pinch of turmeric and necessary salt.

7. Fry till oil separates

8. Add chicken. Fry for a couple of minutes

9. Add rice. Fry for a minute

10. Add water = 2.5x rice quantity

11. Close cooker. Put whistle.

12. Chill out and watch tv

13. After 1 whistle, put stove on sim for 4 minutes

14. Turn off stove.

15. Chill out and watch tv for ten minutes

16. Open cooker. Notice rice is soggy and has expanded to enormous size and looking like Kerala rice. Realise maybe it was not basmati rice after all.

17. Put lid back again. Struggle to get handles on top and bottom of cooker to meet. Give up. Light stove again

18. Chill out and watch tv till you hear a blast

19. Run to kitchen to notice cooker lid is near the fridge and half the biriyani is on the ceiling

20. Eat the remaining biriyani. Yummmm….

21. Burn off calories by cleaning the kitchen ceiling for the next hour

12 comments:

Revati Upadhya said...

how NOT to cook chicken biryani no? poor you..

Archana said...

Oh my dear Lord!!! When did this happen??

Anita said...

hAAthi - Yup, that may have been a more appropriate title.

Archana - On Sunday. It was an eventful lunch.

SK said...

Hahah!
How Not to cook biriyani indeed!

When I saw 2.5 times water only I realized something was amiss.

Making biriyani seriously is an art.

Anita said...

SK - This year's resolution is to learn how to make good biriyani. I can see lot of 'how not to make biriyani' ahead for a while...

Bharathis said...

You never said it over phone! Take care while using pressure cooker.

Once the Conman said...

Hillarious!

byker7 said...

My wife has a fridge magnet.It says: "I have a kitchen, because it came with the house."

I have speed dial. Biryani, is #7.

Mum's delight said...

moral of the story: don't eat chicken!

Anita said...

Bharathis - yes I will

Once the conman - in retrospect, I must say it was

Mum's Delight - How did you manage to nail the moral of the story so accurately!!

Sonal said...

i got excited when i read the title of your post.have been asking around for a good recipe for chicken biryani for a long time now with no luck. thought i finally found a tried and tested recipe...till i came upon point three...and then four...and five....anita, what did you guys finally eat??

Anita said...

:) actually the receipe is ok. Just that I added too much water. Biriyani rice apparently takes much less.