May 31st, 2008 | 
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If I ask you, “which is your favored Indian rice recipe”?, I am sure your topmost answer will be “a biryani”. Even in biryanis the most liked of all is a chicken biryani. So here is a recipe for you to make a perfective biryani. Ingredients required Ingredients for marinating the chicken * 1 Kilo Chicken on the bone cut into 12-16 pieces Mix all of the above ingredients and let the chicken marinate for 6-12 hours, more the better. Herbs, spices and condiments employed are as follows * 8 cloves For fried onions About 8-9 medium size onions Other Ingredients Deep fry the onions Stir the onions without disturbance for uniform browning. When they become light brown, drain them on kitchen paper. Keep them aside. They will get nice crispy as they cool down. Cook the Chicken Take a deep, wide mouth vessel and heat 3-4 tablespoons of oil in it. In this add the bay leaves, cloves, cinnamon, cardamoms, little bit of shahi jeera and grant to crackle. Now add a tablespoon of ginger garlic paste and stir a little. Now tip out all the marinated chicken and the marinade. Cook on a high flame so that the water gets evaporated quickly. Add the chopped tomatoes, mint, green chilies, all arid powders(coriander, chili), and salt. Cook till the chicken is cooked and the gravy (masala) is not watery. Add one third of the fried onions. Mix well. Keep aside. Parboil the rice Boiling rice is one of the most crucial share of cooking a biryani. The rice needs to be parboiled. Meaning, it must be three fourth cooked. The rest of it gets cooked on dum (when we layer the chicken and rice, seal it and put on a very slow fire). To boil the rice take a huge deep wide mouth vessel, add lots of water (at least 10 times more than rice). Add plenteous salt (this is very primary because the rice needs to be salty when cooked). Also add a cinnamon stick, a couple of green cardamoms, a few cloves and the rest of caraway seeds (shahi jeera), for flavoring the rice. Now boil all this for a few minutes on a high flame (7 minutes or so). This is how to check if the rice is done. Without burning your fingers, take a few grains of rice (use a clean spoon to take a heap of out of the boiling water), break a grain, if it breaks into 3 constituents easily, your rice is done. Strain the rice and disseminate it on a clean surface ( a tray or something), so that it cools faster. If you want to pick out the whole spices which you added, you may do that now. Or else just let them be. Keep all these ready Now that the rice and chicken are cooked. Fried onions are ready. You just need to get a few more things organized, so that the layering may be done. * Chop the coriander leaves Layering the biryani Take a heavy bottom pan with a lid (non stick is best). Take galore melted ghee and grease the bottom of the pan with it. Then * Put a layer of rice, Repeat and finish off with the rice layer. Lastly, sprinkle the leftover fried onions (if any), cashews and other nuts. Pour the saffron milk on top. Also pour a good deal of desi ghee down the sides of the pan and a great deal of on top of the rice. It will trickle down with the heat. Yep, you are done. Seal the lid by sticking it with a lot of chapati dough or plainly fix a big foil before placing the lid. The idea is to restrict the steam from escaping. Place this pot on a very slow flame. Ideally place this vessel on top of another flat pan or tawa, so that the bottom of the pan doesn’t come in direct contact with the heat source. Leave for one hour. When you open it, what you get is the magical, flavorsome and aromatic chicken biryani. Please dig in. Don’t forget to prepare a riata while your biryani is cooking. Enjoy hot biryani with a cold raita.
Most helpful customer reviews 408 of 413 people found the following review helpful. I enjoy the fact that the device has a sealed top which really seems to help the rice be more consistent and also makes me feel better having this unit used with three small children in the house running around. The rice receptacle inside is a delightful non-stick surface that is more then easy to clean. The steam feature for other items works wonderful as well. I have left rice in the device for over two hours after cooking and it is still moist, tasty and not burnt. The one touch button cooking is a breeze and for me it takes about 30 minutes or so in most instances for the quantity I cook. The only thing I learned I had to do is not place the device under anything when cooking. There is a starchy steam that is released during cooking that can coat wood and other surfaces. On wood this starch coating can be a pain to remove. This is a great device to cook an entire meal or side in quick mindless ease. I can’t think of a feature I would change on this unit. A great device that actually has increased the amount of rice and vegetables I and my family consume. Unless you need larger quantities of rice then this device is capable of I really can’t see why anyone would need anything else. This is a great product at a great price. Wonderful! 234 of 236 people found the following review helpful. August 2007: I’m amazed at just how well this basic rice cooker does its job! It’s easy to clean, can keep cooked rice hot for hours and is extremely easy to use. I shopped around and considered the higher priced models but decided to start with something inexpensive to see if a rice cooker was really an appliance I needed in my kitchen. This one does a great job for a very reasonable price and I’m so glad I didn’t pay more. We’re using it to cook Basmati rice (bought in bulk) and with this cooker it turns out perfect every time. It really does wonders to help stretch our food budget. Added December 2009: Still going strong after years of use and many batches of perfect rice later. I just bought another one and donated the old one to my grown step-daughter’s post graduation era kitchen. One of our favorite “new” things to do is make Vigo’s Yellow Rice mix. In fact, it’s super easy to make ANY pre-packaged (and flavored) rice mix. Here’s what you do: Open the rice package and pour it into a measuring cup. Note the measurement, then pour it into the cooker. Then measure the same amount of warm water PLUS one half cup and add to the cooker. (If there are 2 cups of contents from your package you need 2.5 cups of warm water.) Stir well to dissolve & distribute the spices/flavorings and then press start. It’s that easy. By the way, you can also do the same method to cook pre-packaged beans & rice, such as the Read Beans and Rice that Vigo makes. It’s really good! Added October 2010: From time to time I look at the more expensive models and while I’m sure they do things that would impress me, this cooker meets my needs admirably. Just last night it saved dinner. I’d been planning to serve leftovers but noticed that someone had already been at them, leaving little to split among our family members. I added 2 bags of Vigo Red Beans and Rice to the cooker along with 4 cups of water. Then I added a frozen package of cocktail wieners that I had in the freezer (not thawed). The result was a hit with the whole family, though admittedly it wasn’t exactly one of our healthier meals. I was impressed that I could add frozen ingredients to the cooker and have such great results using only the most basic of rice cooker abilities. Yes, this cooker was a great buy for our family. Added June 2011: We are a year and a half into our second cooker and it still operates like it did brand new. We use it frequently and because we take care to clean and store it properly we can expect to get quite a lot more use out of it. One of the best parts about this cooker is that it is SIMPLE. The more complicated a thing is, the more likely it is that something will break. With few moving parts and a basic programming interface, this cooker is just about as simple as they come and is a pretty good kitchen investment. If you want to get a long life out of this machine, it will be important to make sure that you don’t use metal utensils inside the pot as scratches develop over time that will ruin the finish. 105 of 108 people found the following review helpful. |
Wonderful Well Designed Cooker!
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