Chicken Biriyani/Biryani - Tamil Muslim Style

Take a glass and measure rice. Wash, soak and set aside. Using the same glass measure water (for 4 cups of rice, 6 cups of water) and take it into a cooking vessel. Bring this water to boil on medium flame.

In another bowl add chicken (cleaned and washed), chopped tomatoes, green chilies, little coriander leaves, little mint leaves, curd, red chili powder and turmeric powder. Combine well using hands. Cover and set aside.

In the meantime, heat oil and ghee in a pressure cooker. To this add remaining coriander and mint leaves along with garam masala powder (you can even use whole garam masala spices) and fry carefully without burning powder.

Add sliced onions and fry until golden brown. Now add ginger-garlic paste and fry till raw smell wafts.

To this add marinated chicken pieces and on medium flame combine well. To this add biryani masala and saute.

At this stage add measured hot water from step ‘1’ along with salt. If you prefer spicy biryani then add few more green chilies at this stage and stir to combine.

Drain water from soaking rice and add this to above boiling water. Stir gently. Place the lid and once pressure starts to release, put on the whistle.

Cook for 10-12 minutes and turn off the flame. Carefully release the pressure as soon as possible, doing so rice will remain fluffy.

Take out the lid and using a ladle mix the rice in clock wise or anti clock wise pattern. This is important step as mixing the rice clock-wise and anti-clock-wise direction will break the rice. So follow only one pattern either clock-wise o

Now transfer it to casserole. Add little ghee on top of rice. Sprinkle little garam masala and few coriander leaves. Serve warm with onion-cucumber raita, chicken 65 and brinjal gravy.