Chicken Briyani

Making briyani for a sunday lunch had been a tradition in our home for quite a long time, so that i could achieve perfection. Here is one simple recipe to make an awesome briyani. There are several methods to make briyani, this method is know as kachi briyani. Its quite simple to make and you cant really go wrong with this recipe.

Ingredients:

Chicken - 1 kg with bone
Basmati rice- 4-5 cups
oil - 6 tbsp
ghee -2 tbsp
spice - bay leaves, star anise, cardamom, cinnamon, other spices. Garam masala powder is optional.
ginger garlic paste - 3 tbsp
curd - 1 cup
coriander leaves- 1 bunch
mint leaves - bunch
Fried onions - 250 g
kala jeera - 1tbsp
black whole pepper - 1tbsp
green chilies - 4 numbers
red chili powder - 2 tbsp (if you like it spicy you could add more)
Coriander powder - 2 tbsp
Turmeric powder-1/2 tsp
Lemon juice - 4-5 tbsp
Salt - as required


Methods:

Marinate cleaned chicken with ginger garlic paste, chopped coriander leaves, chopped mint leaves, black pepper, chopped green chilies, chili powder, coriander powder, turmeric powder, curd, oil, ghee, fried onions, salt, whole spices, salt. Mix well and if possible marinate it over night in the refrigerator.

Soak the washed basmati rice for 30 mins. In a large vessel add salt, lemon juice, jeera, oil and enough water to cook the rice. The water should taste salty in order to half enough salt for the rice. Add the rice and cook let it get cooked. Take half of the rice when its 60% done and drain it. The other half of the rice should be drained when it is 75% done.

to cook the basmati rice

In a heavy bottom vessel, i use a pan shaped pressure cooker and it works perfectly well. Grease the pan and add the marinated chicken to the bottom of the vessel. Now make a layer with the 60% cooked rice. Top it with some chopped mint, coriander leaves, fried onions. Now add a layer of 75% done rice and top it with chopped mint, coriander, and fried onions. 

Add set to cook, bottom layer is chicken and topped with two layers of rice.

Cover the cooker but with out the weight valve. Cook in high flame for 10 mins and followed by medium heat for 15 mins. Now your house must be filled with the yummy smell of this awesome briyani.

You need to mix the briyani with the chicken at the bottom layer when you serve.

Adai

I love breakfast recipes and I really like making a variety of break fast. This is one of the nice recipe i really like. Its also very health with a combination of lentils.

Ingredients:

Toor dal - 1 cup
Chenna dal - 1 cup
Green gram - 1 cup
Urid dal - 1/2 cup
Raw rice - 3/4 cup
Idly rice - 3/4 cup

Dry chilie - 6
Seragam - 1tsp
Sombu -1 tsp
Garlic - 6
onion - 2 medium size
Ginger - 1 inch piece
Asfetida -1/2 tsp
coriander leaves  and curry leaves
Salt to taste

Method:

Soak the rice and urid dal together. Soak all the other dals together. After about 2-3 hours you could grind them in a grinder or a mixie.

Grind the Rice and urid dal to a fine paste. Once they are done you could add the soaked dals to it if your mixie or grinder capacity allows it. You could add the dry chilies, cumin, sombu now to the mixier. Grind the dals to a coarse paste, it could only take about 3 minutes.  Grinding process takes only a few minutes.

 This the is ground adai batter. If you have made a larger amount of the batter then you could store part of it in fridge for about 2 days at this stage without adding the other ingredients.

 Add finely chopped onions, garlic, ginger, coriander leaves, curry leaves, asafetida, salt.

Make them like dosa. You might have to add water to make the batter a little thinner but dont make it to dosa batter consistency. It has to be thicker than dosa batter.

You could add gingili oil or butter to grease it. Cook this in medium high flame till well done. It take longer to cook than a dosa. You have to flip it over and cook on both the sides. Enjoy this with butter if you like or with hot onion chutney or it goes so well with avial.

Vathal with philips air fryer

Here is something very very simple which i tried out in the air fryer. As i mentioned in the first post about air fryer, i want to try the basic cooking init so i could use it more in our everyday cooking.

I coated the store bought vathal which half a teaspoon of oil in a bowl and tossed it into the air fryer and fried it for 2 mins at 160 C. Its comes out really puffed up and evenly colored. You really cant make out if it was fried in a conventional way or not.

It makes a lot of sense as its just 2 mins and way too little oil to get this one. In the traditional method, i normal fry a big batch and store it for a week or two and if the oil doesnt look bad i use it in the next days or sometime throw it away. 

My verdict: Its faster, cheaper on power and oil, tastes the same. So really cool.

Fried vathal