Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani

Ingredients:

• Marinade
  • 2 lbs Chicken cut up into 2” pieces
  • ½ cup Yogurt
  • 1 1/2 tbsp Ginger Garlic Paste
  • 2 – 3 tsp Chili Powder
  • 2 tsp Coriander Powder
  • 12 small Chilies split into two
  • 1 cup chopped Mint Leaves
  • 1 cup chopped Cilantro
  • ½ tsp Turmeric
  • Garam Masala Powder
    • 10 Pepper Corns
    • 10 Coves
    • ½ tsp Cardamom Seeds
    • ½ tsp Sahajeera or Black Cumin
    • 1” Cinnamon Stick
  • Juice of 1 lime
  • Salt to Taste
• 1 Large Onion sliced
• 1 cup Oil
• ½ tsp of saffron strands
• ½ cup milk
• 4 cups Basmati Rice soaked for 30 minutes
• Spices for boiling rice
  • 6 Cardamoms
  • 3 Cloves
  • 2 Bay Leaves
  • 1 Bay Flower or Biryani Flower
  • 1 tsp Sahajeera
  • ½ tsp Ginger Garlic Paste
  • 1 tbsp of Oil
  • First Full of Salt

Method:

• Clean the chicken and cut it into 2” pieces. Wash the chicken and squeeze all the water from it. This is very important that you squeeze all the water away from the pieces or put it a colander to let water drain away.
• Grind all the ingredients listed under garam masala to a fine powder.
• Mix all the ingredients of the marinade and marinate for at least 1 hour or overnight in the fridge.
• In pan heat oil and fry the onions until light golden brown.
• Soak saffron in hot milk.
• In a big pot bring water to a boil, add all the spices for boiling rice and mix well.
• Add rice and continue to cook until you get a one good boil, i.e rice should roll over with boiling water. It takes about 2 ½ – 3 minutes on my stove. Drain the rice and keep aside.
• Now its time to arrange chicken and rice in layers, one layer of chicken and two layers of rice. In a heavy bottom sauce pan, pour ½ the oil at the bottom, arrange the chicken pieces and sprinkle some oil on top of the chicken.
• Arrange ½ the boiled rice on the chicken pieces, sprinkle some oil, ½ the fried onions and ½ the saffron milk.
• Repeat the above step for the last layer, I.e, arrange the last layer of rice. Spread the rest of the rice, sprinkle all the oil, fried onions and the saffron milk.
• Now, we need to seal the the container and make it air tight so that the steam doesn’t escape when we cook. In India, flour dough or a big cloth is used to seal the container and the cover together. Here, I use an aluminum sheet. take 2 sheets of aluminum foil (the sheets should be bigger than the diameter of the sauce pan) and place it on top of the sauce pan and then cover it with the lid. We will have aluminum sheets between the pan and its lid. Since we took the sheets bigger than the diameter of the pan, we will use that to seal the pan and the lid.
• Put a heavy object (motor pesto or heavy pan or skillet) on the top of the container, so that the steam doesn’t escape easily.