Chicken Biryani

Biryani is probably the most famous dish in all of India, and for good reason. It's delicious. Biryani might sound complicated, and it does take a little time, but I'm going to break it up for you into six simple steps. The first step being toasting off your spices. The first spice is cinnamon, which I'm going to break up into the pan. Then bay leaf, which I'll tear up as well. Notice how I'm starting with the larger spices first. Then star anise, which smells a little bit like licorice. A few cardamom pods. Then some mace. Before cooking biryani, I'd never seen the whole spice like this. Then some cloves. Fennel seeds. Then caraway seeds, which look a lot like fennel, but a bit darker. Some black peppercorns. Black cardamom, which smells very strong and smoky. And coriander. Now we'll turn our heat to medium, medium low, and then as we toast, it's a little bit less about what you see and more about what you smell. Your nose should tell you when they're done. You're looking to release all that beautiful flavor from these fragrant spices. The other thing I like to look out for are those crackles that start to happen with the spices. Sometimes they'll even start to jump around in the pan a little bit, and that should tell you they're getting closer to being toasted off correctly. Once your spices are fragrant and they look and sound and feel toasted, go ahead and immediately pour them off into your mortar. I also tend to wait to add in my nutmeg until after I finish toasting so that it doesn't burn. Now, I love this part. I like the sounds. I like the feeling of it all. The smell that you get is so incredible. You can almost see the scent climbing right out of the mortar as you break these apart. This is a really, really difficult smell to describe if you are not right there in front of it. The best way I can describe it is almost like a warmly spiced, fresh-baked pastry. It's sweet and woody with hints of licorice and citrus, but you also get all sorts of smokiness and even this flour-like smell. Once fully ground, your spice mix is done. Step number two is marinating our chicken, and for that, I'll start with some yogurt, then this ginger garlic paste, some of this Kashmiri chili powder, as well as some turmeric. What you're seeing here is one of my favorite parts about cooking Indian cuisine. It's so colorful. Then a few scoops of that spice mix that we just made, a nice pinch of salt, and a few split open green chilies. If you split them like this, they'll give off tons of flavor but be really easy to take out at the end. Mix this up until your chicken marinade is evenly combined. Unbelievable colors. You may be wondering, Nick, where'd you get such a cool shirt? The shirt came from one of my subscribers who lives in India and gave it to me as a gift when I was there. Once you've mixed your chicken marinade, add in all of that chicken. We're using chicken with the bone in, not boneless chicken. That way, the chicken won't dry out in our biryani. And then really get in there with your hands and make sure everything is fully mixed. Hit every corner of all that chicken. The better you mix it in, the better your biryani. The smell is this beautiful spiced yogurt. This is one of the things that makes biryani so incredible, the layering of so many different flavors. We have one spice mix in here that's being spread around by a nice tart yogurt, and then separately, our rice will have all different kinds of seasonings, and then you'll see when we layer it all together how that flavor really builds up. Once fully mixed, cover and place in the fridge for at least two hours, preferably overnight. To finish the chicken, this here is one of my prized possessions. This is a beautiful biryani pot, and into it, I will add some ghee. And as that's melting down, I'll put on some gloves and grab my chicken from the fridge. This one has been marinating overnight. Once the ghee is melted, I'll place all my chicken skin side down, layering it all the way in an even layer across the bottom of the pan. This is going to be perfect. Look at this pattern. We want to use all of that nice spiced yogurt, so make sure you get every last drop and put it on your chicken as well. That's going to make a really nice sauce at the base of our biryani. And we'll leave this to cook over medium-medium-high for about 30 to 45 minutes. If you're using a traditional pot like this, you'll notice the color will also change over time as it cooks, and that's totally normal. Step number three, frying the onions. If you like, you can definitely buy the onions pre-fried, but it doesn't take too long to make them at home, and they definitely taste a lot more homemade that way. To slice them, I'm going to use a mandolin. You want them to be nice and thin, but not too thin. If you're doing it right, they should look something like this. Once we've sliced our onions into a pan with some oil, and your onions can go straight into that cold oil. The reason we start with cold instead of hot is so that our onions can soften a bit as that oil heats up. Now, heat on. We'll keep it nice and low, and we can just let these onions cook low and slow until they get nice and golden and crispy. Let's move on to step number four, the rice. One of the most important parts of biryani is using a nice aged basmati rice. We'll start by measuring out a few cups of rice into a nice big bowl of some kind that you'll be able to rinse it in. Then I'll cover this with water and give it a nice rinse. You'll want to rinse your rice off multiple times until the water runs clear, and once your water runs mostly clear, let it soak for about 30 minutes. This will ensure that each grain stays long and fluffy after you cook it. Lucky for you, this rice has already been soaked, so we can bring it over to our pot of boiling water, and into that I'm going to add these spices. Some of the same spices that we used earlier, and these are going to season our rice. Along with these, I'm also going to add a bunch of salt. Sort of like making pasta, you need to season your water so it can season your rice. And then in goes all of that soaked rice. Bring this up to a nice hard simmer, and then let it go for five to seven minutes, or until the rice is cooked about 75% of the way through. Make sure to watch carefully and taste as you go. While that rice cooks, I will pull off our crispy onions because those look finished. With these, I'll spread them out into some paper towels, and they should continue to crisp up and set as they dry out and leak off some of that oil into the paper towel. Set those aside and move back over to our rice. Once each grain is soft on the outside and a little harder on the inside, it's done. Pour it off into a colander to strain out all that extra liquid, and your rice is now finished. You'll want to make sure to pick out all the extra little bits that were in there. I'm letting it stay nice and dry on this sheet tray here, and now we move on to step number five, which is the layering process. The first step for this process is to make some saffron milk. I have some very special saffron that I'm going to crush up into this warm milk, and if you watch carefully, right away you should see that it should start to get a little yellow on the outsides of the saffron. I'll mix this up and set it off to the side to continue to bloom. And then another great thing about biryani, all of the fresh delicious herbs. Here we have mint and cilantro, and with these you'll just want to pick off all of the leaves. You can chop it up with a knife if you want, but I tend to just use my hands. And for the cilantro, I'll just shave off all those leaves. Like I said, now we start layering. First with half of our crispy onions, evenly around that chicken, then a nice sprinkle of that mint and cilantro. Make sure when you do this that everything is evenly spread out. The better you spread it, the more even that flavor will be. Then over the top of that, we'll begin to add our rice. We want a very even layer here, and when you're doing this, don't forget about the corners. What's also nice about putting the rice on the sheet tray is you'll find all those extra little bits that you'll want to take out much easier. Doing this reminds me of making biryani in India with my friend Varun, who happens to be the head chef at the number one restaurant in all of India. So if you're making this recipe right now, you should know that he himself took a look at this recipe and approved it. Some people, when they make biryani, do multiple layers of different things, but a lot of people, when they make it at home, just do one layer of chicken and one layer of rice. So that's the version we're doing here. To finish the layering process, we'll go over the rice with some saffron milk. This, I think, might be my favorite part because it gives these beautiful yellow streaks, and if you leave some of the parts of the rice white and then some of them covered with that saffron, you'll see that once it's cooked, it gives this really nice speckled pattern with the rice. After the saffron milk, we'll put the rest of our crispy onions. Then this is a trick that I learned from Chef Varun. Drizzle over just a little bit of that onion flavored oil and top it all off with more mints and finally some cilantro. As a last touch, we can also take a bit of that special biryani seasoning that we made and sprinkle it all across the top of our biryani as well. The final step in the layering process is called the dumb method. D-U-M. All we're going to do is make a little dough here. You can even just eyeball this. You're not going to eat this dough, and you want to add just enough water that it can all hold together. What we're really making right now is a lid that we'll cover our biryani pot with to bake. Once the dough feels like it's hydrated enough, you can go ahead and get in there with your hands. And now we can just work it like a normal dough. The reason we're making this dough lid is because it traps all that steam inside the biryani and will keep everything nice and moist. Really doesn't matter what it looks like as long as it can form a nice airtight lid just big enough that it can drape over the sides of your biryani pot. I'm not going to tell you that this will be quick. It will take a long time. Once you think you've rolled it out enough, grab that biryani pot, bring it back in, stretch it, and be sure to pull it nice and tight. Then squeeze all around the edges to secure it. We want a nice hard seal so that none of that moisture can escape while cooking. As our final step before baking, I'll paint over a little bit of ghee all around the dough, which will give it a beautiful golden brown finish, but also make sure that that dough doesn't crack when it cooks. And finally, we are ready to bake. There's already a few large bubbles starting to form on our lid, and this is a great sign. This means that steam is building up on the inside, which should give us a very tender biryani. When your biryani looks done, be very careful. If you are really quiet, you can almost hear a few of these cracking sounds as the lid settles once it comes out of the oven. After all the hard work, it's time to cut it open. Once you've cut around the edges, open it up. Wow! That plume of steam that you just saw is probably one of the best smells you will ever experience. So now, despite how long we've just cooked this for, maybe the hardest part for me is always knowing where to take a nice scoop. I'm going to use this as my plate, and I'll scoop for some of that nice yogurt sauce that was on the bottom there. Oh, it's been all caramelized. The smell is this incredibly complex, irresistible smell. Makes you want to dive right in. As my first taste, oh my gosh, seasoned to perfection, but also fall apart tender. I can't believe how good the chicken is. It's actually even better than I thought it would be. It's so, so soft, flaky, and still very tender. It's perfectly cooked. And then for the rice and the rest of my biryani, I'll finish it with just a bit of this onion raita. Just a simple yogurt, onion, few herbs, a little bit of that biryani spice blend that we made. Had to take the plate with me.