Chicken Dum Biryani is a popular non-vegetarian dish. It is cooked with chicken, rice and aromatic spices. Though it is a very lengthy process at the same time, it is the easiest and tastiest biryani.
It is layered with rice and chicken and cooked as an almost one-pot meal until rice becomes fluffy and chicken cooked to perfection. It’s a perfect mouth-watering party dish when you invite family and friends for dinner.
Making a Biryani from scratch is a real labour of love. There is an art to perfecting each component – layering them before sealing, then allowing them to steam under the “dum” to then reveal perfectly cooked, tender chicken and pillowy grains of infused rice. Ahhhh I can smell the aromas as I type this!
Biryani comes in all shapes and sizes depending on what part of India you are in. This Chicken Dum Biryani is a fairly straight forward one and cooks quite quickly. It’s a recipe that I have modified to work in the modern kitchen (puff pastry to replace a whole wheat dough, steaming in the oven instead of on the stove etc) but it still works an absolute treat and tastes absolutely delicious!
Chicken Dum Biryani can be prepared in two ways Kacha (kachi) method and pakki method. In the kachi method of making biryani, the raw ingredients are just marinated and placed at the bottom of making biryani, the raw ingredients are just marinated and placed at the bottom of autensil and layered with partially cooked rice, saffron etc. Sealed & cooked on a slow dum process, trapping the steam inside for even cooking.
Pakki is the other method where the meat and rice are cooked separately and then the rice, saffron etc are layered, sealed and cooked on a dum process for a shorter time. This recipe yields very aromatic biryani rice with delicious, soft tender & succulent chicken with bursting flavours.
Chicken biryani is served with a raita and shorba.
