I’m on a culinary journey of trying out different cuisines with the month of July exploring Indian recipes.  What is great about Indian recipes there are many websites that have tons of great recipes and have videos showing how to make them.  To get started, I recalled some dishes I have tried and wanted to try from all of the visits to the local Indian restaurants.  With a little research on the internet, I finally have list of recipes that I want to make and noticed most of the recipes have a long ingredient list.  This very fact was very intimidating but then again I have made other dishes like Chicken Tika Masla and they have all turned out well.   So, come along my culinary journey to learn more about different cuisines, cooking follies, and fun.

Great sites for recipes:

http://www.vahrehvah.com/

http://showmethecurry.com/

http://www.manjulaskitchen.com/

2nd dish – Indian Cusine: Chicken Biryani

I’ll start out by showing out the finished Chicken Biryani.

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Here the meal is served!  The dish tasted great!  It wasn’t perfect but for the first try it exceeded expectations.

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This dish tasted amazing.  I have never had it before but will definitely make this again.  The aroma for this dish was amazing too; although it did linger to the next day.  Good thing we had leftovers.

To recap how it’s cooked; throw chicken, marinade, spices and some (I accidentally put all of the fried onions…opps) of the fried onion into a large bowl and let sit covered a few hours in the fridge.   Get the basmati rice soaking and then get it partially cooked.  Then comes a mysterious step of “Dum” cooking everything.  Hugh, what did I say….  well, “Dum” cooking is using a heavy bottom pan to cook the chicken and let the aromatic flavor help cook the rice.  It’s key to keep the top of this pan covered to allow the great aromatics in the pan flavor the rice.  I used a kitchen towel but things like dough can be used as well.  I do hope the aromatics come out of the towel I used after laundry is done.

Overall, the dish was a little challenging not knowing about “Dum” cooking but it’s such a great tasting dish.  Dum cooking is a lot like baking where you throw everything together and hope for the best.  My chicken did turn out a little over cooked.  I dum cooked it 40 minutes and probably had the heat too high as well.  So, with all of the follies, I will know what to do next time 🙂  Also, I’ll use more whole spices since I used mainly powder spices.   I didn’t know the conversion so I gosh and by gollied the amounts.   Whole spices can be tempered which enhance the flavor too.   What is “Tempered”?  It is taking whole spices and heating them up in a frying pan.  So, if you don’t use whole spice, find a recipe that uses powder spices to get an accurate quantity.  At the Indian grocery you can buy a lot of spices for very little money comparatively to most groceries.  I omitted Saffron because it is so expensive and haven’t found a good alternative.  Most say there isn’t one.  It’s the most expensive spice by ounce in the world.  Well, now that you have vicariously experienced how to cook chicken biryani, try it out it’s an amazing dish.

Recipe Link: http://www.spicytasty.com/meat-and-seafood-entrees/hyderabadi-chicken-dum-biryani/

 

Note: I’m not a professional, don’t take any of my advice,  and don’t try this at home.