Hyderabadi Mutton Biryani

Ingredients:

• Marinade
  • 2 lbs Goat meat cut into pieces
  • ¾ – 1 cup yogurt
  • 2 tbsp Ginger Garlic Paste
  • 2 tsp Chili Powder
  • 14 small Chilies split into two (adjust to your taste)
  • 1 cup chopped Mint Leaves
  • 1 cup chopped Cilantro
  • Salt to Taste (sufficient for the meat)
  • Garam Masala Powder
    • 10 Pepper Corns
    • 10 Coves
    • ½ tsp Cardamom Seeds
    • ½ tsp Sahajeera or Black Cumin
    • 1” Cinnamon Stick
• 1 Large Onion sliced
• 1 Lime
• 1 cup Oil (can use half oil and half ghee)
• ½ tsp of saffron strands
• ½ cup milk
• 4 cups Basmati Rice soaked for 30 minutes (rice cooker measuring cup)
• 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 and cut the goat meat.
• Grind all the ingredients listed under garam masala to a fine powder.
• Mix all the ingredients of the marinade and marinate for at least 2 hour , preferably overnight in the fridge.
• Cook the meat with ½ the oil in a pressure cooker. Don’t add any water when cooking. In my cooker it takes 6-7 whistles and 5 minutes on low flame to cook. Once the pressure in the cooker goes away, open it and cook it until all the water evaporates. OR
• Can cook the meat on the stove top until tender. This will take about an hour. I prefer the pressure cooker to avoid all the cooking odor when cooking on stove top.
• Squeeze the lime juice on the meat and mix well.
• In a 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 required for boiling rice and mix well.
• Add rice and continue to cook until the rice is almost done. It takes about 7-8 minutes on my stove. Drain the rice and keep aside.
• Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
• Now its time to arrange rice and meat in layers. Grease large baking tray with oil, layer half the rice at the bottom. Sprinkle some oil, fried onions and ½ the saffron milk. Layer the rice with meat followed by a layer of remaining rice. We should have 2 layers of rice and one layer of meat. Top it off the remaining oil, fried onions and saffron milk. Cover the tray with aluminum foil.
• Bake the biryani for 10 minutes on 400 degrees F and 20 minutes on 350 degrees F.