Chicken dum biryani

Chicken dum biryani ( kacchi biryani):

Dum biryani is a method of cooking rice with protein in a closed vessel. Protein could be meat, chicken, prawns, mutton, duck meat, etc. In veg it could be replaced with paneer, tofu, or mix vegetables of your choice.

Everybody is aware of biryani dish, so without increasing my writeup here on knowledge of biryani, let me straight away take you to the recipe which I tried in my kitchen. Whenever you want to go for biryani preparation, see that you have the basic ingredients with you which form the most important spices or the base of a biryani. Whole spices, pudina leaves, cardamom, kewda water or essence, fried onions, curd or yoghurt, cardamom, saffron strands or yellow food color. And dum requires some wheat flour to seal the edges of your vessel.

I never had before tried a chicken biryani, though prepared veg and egg biryani lot of times, so today I thought let's go for it. A dum biryani sounds very difficult but it's a very time saving recipe, which yields a more flavourful dish at the end.

So let's start.

Ingredients and method:

Chicken -2 kg
Wash the chicken thoroughly 3 times.

Marination:
Kashmiri red chilli powder, jeera powder, garam masala powder, coriander powder, ginger garlic paste, salt ( all 2 tsp each), 1 cinnamon, 4 cardamom, 1 bay leaf, 1 badi elaichi, green chillies(5-6 long slitted), chopped pudina(mint) leaves, chopped coriander leaves, curd(all these 1 cup each). Prepare fried onions by long slitting 3 fat onions and sauting them in oil till golden brown. Add these fried onions in marinated chicken.
Make homemade spice powder:
Grind together following:
5 red chillies, 5 cashewnuts, 4 cloves, 2 cinnamon, 2 cardamom, 2 badi elaichi, 2 bay leaves, 1/2 nutmeg, 2 whole javitri, 1 tsp jeera, 2 tsp coriander seeds.
Apply this homemade spice powder to the marinated chicken, add 4-5 tsp of ghee, and if available add 2 tsp of biryani masala( this is optional). Mix everything very well to the chicken pieces. Keep the marinated chicken in refrigerator overnight. ( note- not in the freezer).

Next day prepare 80% cooked basmati rice.
Basmati rice-1 kg
Wash the rice thrice delicately and soak in water for 30 mins.
Boil water. Add 2 cardamom, 2 bay leaves, 2-3 cloves, 1 cinnamon, 1 badi elaichi, 1 green chilli, 2 whole javitri. When water boils vigorously, add soaked rice, 1/2 cup oil, 1/2 cup salt, 3 tsp ghee. Mix well. Check the rice. Once cooked to 80%, drain the rice and spread on a plate aside.

Now for final preparation of dum.
Make a powder of 1 nutmeg and 3-4 whole javitri (mace).

Put saffron strands in a small cup of hot water or milk.

Prepare ata of wheat flour.
Again prepare fried onions of another 3 fat onions. Procedure is same as explained before.

Now in the biryani vessel add oil, marinated chicken. Spread them evenly.

Add pudina leaves, fried onions.

Add cooked rice, saffron water in few places, pudina leaves, fried onions, coriander leaves, nutmeg mace powder, ghee(3 tsp).

Apply second layer of cooked rice, pudina leaves, coriander leaves, fried onions, saffron water, ghee(3 tsp on top, 3 tsp on all sides of vessel), kewda water, nutmeg mace powder.

Apply wheat ata on sides of vessel.

Put the lid and press it. Keep the dum vessel on flame.

Cook for total 45 minutes:
High flame-10 minutes
Low flame-20 minutes
On tawa low to medium flame-15 minutes.

Follow above step by step. Then off the flame. Remove from tawa.

Open up in 15 to 20minutes.

Mix well the rice and beneath cooked chicken very well and serve hot.

My observation on this recipe: The chicken gets cooked very well, and it develops a taste of tandoori chicken. The spices leave its flavour and you end up in a flavourful dum biryani.

So try out friends and enjoy the delucting dish!!

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