Biryani

Basmati rice cooked with spiced ghee, lamb, onions, and chickpeas

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City/Region: Mughal Empire | India

Time Period: 16th Century

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It’s likely that the word biryani comes from Persian, which would have made its way to India with the Mughal court of the emperor Babur in the 16th century. The actual dish of rice and meat cooked with ghee, however, had been around for hundreds of years before that, appearing sometime in the Vedic Period (1500 B.C.E. - 500 B.C.E.).

Whatever its true origins may be, biryani carries influences of Indian and Mughal (and thus Persian) cuisine and is delicious. The spices make the whole house smell amazing, and the rice is simultaneously fluffy and has the richness of fried rice thanks to the spiced ghee. It’s a bit of work, but it is so, so good.

“10 seer meat, 3 1/2 seer rice; 2 seer ghi; 1 seer gram; 2 seer onions; 1/4 seer salt; 1/4 seer fresh ginger; 2 dam garlic, and round pepper, cinnamon, cardamoms, cloves, 1 dam of each: this gives six dishes.

OF BREAD
...Bread is made in the pantry. There is a large kind, baked in an oven, made of 10 s. flour; 5 s. milk; 1 1/2 s. g’hí; 1/4 s. salt. They make also smaller ones. The thin kind is baked on an iron plate. On sér will give fifteen, or even more. There are various ways of making it: one kind is called chapáti, which is sometimes made of khushkah; it tastes very well, when served hot...”

— Ain-i akbari by Abu’l-Fazl ‘Allami, 16th century

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Ingredients:

Biryani

• 1/2 cup (100 g) dried split chickpeas
• 1 teaspoon (2 g) whole black peppercorns
• 1/2 teaspoon (1 g) green cardamom pods
• 1/2 teaspoon (1 g) black cardamom pods
• 1 teaspoon (2 g) whole cloves
• 3 inches (2 g) cinnamon bark
• 2 cups (350 g) aged basmati rice
• 2 tablespoons salt, plus 1/4 cup for salting the water for the rice
• 1 cup (200 g) unsalted ghee
• 1 large (200 g) red onion, sliced
• 2 tablespoons (25 g) minced fresh ginger
• 1 large clove (4 g) garlic, pressed
• 2 1/4 lbs (1 kg) meat*, cut into in about 1-inch (3 cm) pieces)
• A pinch of saffron

Chapati Dough for the Lid

• 1 3/4 cups (225 g) whole wheat flour
• 1/2 cup (125 ml) whole milk
• 1/3 cup (70 g) ghee
• 1 tablespoon (6 g) salt

*I used lamb, but you can use whatever meat you like.

Instructions:

1. For the biryani: Cover the chickpeas with water and let them soak for 8 hours.
2. Drain the soaked chickpeas and place them in a small pot. Cover them with water and bring to a simmer. Simmer on low heat for 30 minutes, then drain and set aside.
3. While the chickpeas simmer, toast the peppercorns, green and black cardamom pods, whole cloves, and cinnamon bark in a small pan over medium heat, stirring constantly. Toast them for 2 to 3 minutes, or until they’re wonderfully fragrant.
4. You can leave the spices whole if you wish, but I ground mine in a mortar and pestle (you could also use a spice grinder).
5. Rinse the rice several times until the water is almost clear. Be gentle with the grains so that they don’t break. You want to keep the nice, long grains of rice.
6. Cover the rinsed rice with water and let it soak for 30 minutes.
7. Add 2 quarts (2 L) of water to a large pot and bring it to a simmer. Add the 1/4 cup of salt along with a pinch of the toasted spices.
8. Bring to water to a gentle boil, then drain the soaked rice, stir it into the pot, and cook for 4 to 5 minutes. We’re only partially cooking the rice in this step. If you take out a single grain of rice and press it with your finger, you should be left with a little hard part in the middle.
9. Drain the rice and rinse it under cool water to stop the cooking process.
10. Melt the ghee in a large pot over medium heat. Once it’s hot, stir in the spices. Cook for about 30 seconds to 1 minute, until the spices are fragrant.
11. Stir in the onions, sprinkle them with a large pinch of salt, and cook for about 10 to 12 minutes, stirring occasionally. You want them to be well browned. When they have some nice color, remove as many of them as you can and set them aside. If there are a few left in the pot, that’s okay.
12. Stir the ginger and garlic into the ghee and cook for about a minute, until the smell of the garlic starts to dissipate.
13. Add the meat and sprinkle the 2 tablespoons of salt over it. Cook the meat for a minute or two so that it can get some nice color, then reduce the heat to low, cover with the lid, and cook for another 10 minutes or so, until the meat is mostly cooked through.
14. Soak the saffron in about 1/2 cup of water.
15. For the chapati dough: Mix all of the ingredients for the chapati together. Knead the dough for about 10 minutes, or until it’s smooth and elastic. Cover and set it aside.
16. To assemble: Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C).
17. In a large oven-safe pot, ladle in enough of the ghee that the meat was cooked in to cover the bottom. Add in a layer of the meat, then a layer of chickpeas, then a layer of rice. Drizzle some of the saffron water over the rice, followed by more of the ghee. Scatter a layer of the cooked onions over it next. Repeat the layers of meat, chickpeas, rice, saffron water, ghee, and onions until the pot is full or you’re out of ingredients.
18. Roll the chapati dough out until it’s about 1/4 inch (6 mm) thick or thinner. Set the dough over the pot, pressing down all around the edges to create a seal. The goal is to keep the steam inside the pot as it cooks, so make sure you have a tight seal.
19. Place the pot in the oven and cook for about 2 hours. The dough should be nice and hard. It might puff up or stay flat, but it doesn’t matter which it does as long as the steam isn’t escaping.
20. When the biryani is done, take it out of the oven, break the hard bread on top, and serve the biryani forth.

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