This
post has taken forever. Literally. Everytime I make this biryani
(and honestly this is the ONLY biryani I pretty much make), I would tell myself
I would post this recipe on my blog. But then I would get lazy. Lazy about
taking step by step photos and typing a LONG recipe. In the past month or so,
few of my friends asked me for the recipe. I would keep telling them I will
email them the recipe soon. 'Soon' never came, until today. :D Sorry for
keeping you waiting. I hope this detailed recipe with photos are worth the wait
for you.
By the way, this is my mother in law's recipe which I tweaked here and there.
Serving: Feeds about 4-5 very hungry adults or maybe more
Cooking Time: about 3 hours in total
Cleanup Time: Don’t ask! ;)
Step#1 – Getting the shrimps ready
Ingredients
1.5kg shrimps:
head and devein them – when you purchase 1.5kg of shrimps, by the time you head,
peel and devein them, they weigh about 750gms. This would help you make biryani
with about 500gms of basmati rice.
Chilli powder – 1
tbsp
Turmeric powder –
a pinch
Juice of 1 lemon
Oil – about a cup
Method
After cleaning and patting dry, marinate the shrimps in rest of the ingredients except oil and leave for about twenty to thirty minutes.
Shallow fry shrimps in batches. Do NOT fry them all together. Shrimps release fluid and if you fry them all together, it becomes a liquidy mess instead of crispy shrimps.
Step #2 – Fry onions and nuts for masala as well as garnishing
Ingredients
Four medium sized
onions – sliced in semi circles
Cashew nuts,
halved – ½ cup
Raisins – ¼ cup
or less (My husband and I feel that raisins add sweetness to biryani, which we
are not a fan of. So I leave them out most of the time).
Oil – about a cup
Method
Fry onions until brown and crisp. Use a slotted spoon to drain them.
Once all onion slices are fried, fry the nuts and raisins respectively and keep them aside.
Do NOT move away from the stove during the whole process.
Step #3 – Make the biryani masala
Ingredients
Six medium sized
onions – finely chopped. Easier to use a food processor
4 tbsp ginger
garlic paste – you could simply grind fresh ginger and garlic together
ONE tomato – ground
to paste - do NOT get smart and use more… I did once, it was a disaster!
Four to six green
chillies – finely chopped (you could use less if you don’t like heat)
Half a bunch of
coriander leaves – finely chopped
Ground Almond – 2
tbsp
Yoghurt – ½ cup –
make sure to whisk it a bit with a fork
Coconut milk – ½ cup
– has to be thick
Juice of 1 lemon
Ground Garam
Masala – 1 tbsp
Oil – 2 to 3tbsp
Salt
Method
In a sauce pan, add
oil and sauté chopped onions for about three minutes. Add a pinch of salt to
quicken up the process of sautéing. Once the onions are golden, add
ginger-garlic paste, chopped chillies and continue sautéing. I tend to process
onions, ginger, garlic and green chillies all together and sauté them all
together. :D
Add a good pinch
of garam masala. After few minutes of sautéing, add ground tomato, chopped
coriander and continue to stir. Make sure that you are stirring frequently to
stop it from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
Once the mixture
becomes sort of a pasty lump, add yoghurt – bit by bit. Stir. Add juice of
lemon. Stir. Add coconut milk and stir a bit. When you are adding coconut milk,
remember to bring down the heat. Taste and check whether the masala needs more
salt or lemon juice. Add whatever is required.
Add ground almond.
Ground almond was used as a thickening agent in the olden days and can literally
suck out all the liquid in a gravy. So it is better to add a bit of ground almond
and see whether the masala thickens up more than required. If not, add the
rest.
Let the masala
cook a bit – for a couple of minutes. Add a tablespoonful of
onion/cashewnuts/raisins mixture from Step #2. Stir. Add fried shrimps. Stir.
Cover the pan with it’s lid and let it cook for about five minutes. Make sure
you keep checking incase it sticks to the bottom.
Your biryani
masala is done. :) Now onto cooking the basmati.
Step #4 – Cook Basmati Rice
Like I said
before, since we are getting 750gms of shrimps, we would need 500gms of basmati
rice. Some like more masala in their biryani, some don't. So you can change this ratio according to your preference.
When cooking
basmati, it is best to follow the instructions given behind the packet. I’ve
used several brands and India Gate is the only one that works for me. Please
use whatever you are comfortable with.
Most of the
brands would give you a 1:2 ratio for water – i.e. if you are cooking 1 cup of
rice, you would need 2 cups of water. If you are making pilao, neychor etc this
ratio works fine. However, if you are making biryani, I would suggest you use a
bit less water. You could use 1¾cups of water instead of 2cups. Once the rice is
cooked, it is going to be layered with the masala and cooked again. By reducing
the amount of water used, you can make sure that you get non-sticky rice
instead of overcooked stodgy biryani. :)
Ingredients
I use the glass tumbler shown in the picture below to measure rice. So I used 2 glasses of rice: about 500grams.
3.5 glasses of
water
2 Knorr chicken
stock cubes. You can use chicken/veg of any other brand, doesn’t really matter.
Whole garam
masala: three 1” cinnamon sticks, few cardamom pods lightly crushed, few cloves
1 tbsp of butter
2 tbsp of oil
Method
Wash and soak the
rice in cold water for 20-30 minutes.
Boil water and
add stock cubes. Keep it aside.
(If you are not
using stock cubes – boil water and add a good pinch of salt. Keep it aside.)
In a deep bottom
pan, add butter. When it starts melting add oil quickly.
Once the oil is
hot enough, add whole garam masala and sauté quickly. Add rice before the
spices darken. Saute with a fork so that rice grains don’t break.
When rice grains
are glossy, add the stock/water.
It get’s a bit
tricky from here. I’ve seen people stir the rice like crazy after adding water.
I used to do it myself. But the trick to getting non-sticky basmati is to leave
it ALONE. Yes, I mean it. Do not touch it after you add water. Let the
water/stock boil and reach the same level as rice. Once it does, lower the heat
to minimum and close the pan with it’s lid. Let it cook for TEN minutes. Please
time it.
After ten
minutes, switch off the heat. Open the lid and cover the pan with a kitchen towel
(tea towel), put the lid back on and leave for 5 minutes.
After five minutes, open the lid again and fluff up the rice using 'forks'. Do not use spoon as this breaks the rice.
Result – non-sticky
basmati rice like we get in restaurants. :) The above method of cooking basmati
is a combination of tricks I learnt from my mother-in-law and Nigella. :))
Step #5 – Layering Biryani and putting it for dum
Ingredients
Garam masala –
loads
Fried onions +
nuts + raisins from Step 2
A VERY deep
bottomed sauce pan.
Aluminium foil
Some butter
Method
Rub butter inside
the sauce pan. This is really not necessary. But since I use stainless steel sauce
pans all the time, rubbing butter avoids masala sticking to the bottom or
sides. This let’s me breathe in peace. ;)
Add some of the
shrimp masala on the bottom of the pan. About 3 inches?
Layer it up with
about 4 inches of rice - I’am giving a vague measurement here. You can do
whatever you feel is best.
Sprinkle fried
onions + nuts + raisins from Step 2.
Sprinkle generous
pinch of garam masala.
Add shrimp masala…
rice… onions+nuts… Continue to do so until you do not have any more rice/masala
left. You would get about three layers depending on the size of your sauce pan.
Cover the sauce
pan and with aluminium foil and put on the lid. Now it’s time to put for ‘dum’.
Dum basically
means the biryani is cooked by baking the rice with the meat and spices in a large pot. This is how all type of biryanis are cooked. So if you go looking for 'dum chicken biryani', you are basically looking for a normal chicken biryani. ;)
In India, we usually put chunks of burning charcoal on top of the lid and leave it.
Out here this isn’t possible (unless you have an outdoorsy kitchen). So what
you can do is preheat your oven and leave the biryani inside at about 180C for
20-30 minutes. Or if you do not have a big oven (like me), you could heat up a
frying pan on the stove and leave the briyani on top of it. You have to keep
the heat level at the minimum possible. Leave it for about 20-30 minutes.
You could keep the biryani pot directly on heat. I use the frying pan as a buffer so that my biryani doesn't get burnt. Clever ha? :D
Step #6
Open up the lid,
remove the aluminium foil DIG IN!! You can enjoy briyani with some raita,
pickle, coconut chutney and pappadum. For me raita and pickle are more than
enough. ;)
