Monday, April 4, 2011

Chole Biryani (Chick Pea Biryani)


Biryani was my favourite back in India, often time, my lunch will consist of a box of Chicken Biryani from Nandhini in Bangalore with a piece of Fried fish... Those were the days I could eat 3000 Calories a day and feel no guilt... LOL

I have been toying the idea of making this Chole Biryani for months ever since I watched it on a Hindi channel, I can't get this brilliant recipe out of my head though I can hardly understand half of the instructions let alone those ingredients written in Hindi!

I manage to find something similar on the Internet and modify it to my liking, the result was mind blowing! and this recipe is a keeper for sure!


Ingredients:(Yield 4-5)
1/2 cup Dried Chickpea (Garbanzo Bean)
2 cup Basmati rice
2 Medium size Potato
1/3 cup Shop bought Fried shallot(Or freshly fried onion)
1 medium size onion, sliced


For Marinates:
1/2 cup Coriander Leaves
1/2 cup Mint Leaves
2 cup Skimmed/or full cream Milk Yogurt
1inch ginger
4-5Cloves of garlic
3-4green chilli (reduce for lesser heat)
1 tsp Chilli powder
1/2 tsp Turmeric Powder
1 tsp Garam Masala
1 tsp Salt (or to taste)

Spices for rice:
2 Bay Leaves
2-3 Green Cardamom pods (cracked)
2-3 Clove
2-3 inches of Cinnamon Sitck
1/2 tsp salt
5 cup Water

Others:
1/2 cup low far milk/full cream milk
1 pinch Saffron (about 20-25 strings)
3-4 drops of yellow food colouring (Optional)




Soaked chickpea overnight, wash and pressure cooked for 8 minutes, drained, and keep aside.

Note: you could use canned chickpea as substitute, just drain water and wash bean before use.

Grind together all ingredients for marinates, and marinate chickpea for an hour.



Heat up 1/2 cup of milk, add saffron, leave aside.

Cut potatoes into wedges, and fry it with oil till golden brown in colour (Or microwave it for 5 minutes for lesser oil version.)

Wash Basmati rice and soak for 30 minutes, drained.

In a deep cooking pot, pour in 5 cups of water and add all spices for rice,  bring to boil and add rice, cook for 6-8 minutes till the rice half cooked, drained.

You could pick out all the spices or leave it on. Its fine both the ways.



In a dutch oven cooker (or any cookware that could use to bake in an oven) add 3 tbsp of oil or butter/ghee, stir fry onion till golden brown in colour, turn the heat off.

Preheat oven to 350F(175 C).

In the same dutch oven cooker (with fried onion in it), pour HALF of the marinated chickpea on top of the fried onion, spread HALF of the half-boiled rice over marinated chickpea.

Spread the fried potato pieces and fried shallot/onion. Now spread the remaining marinated chickpea over potato pieces, and finally evenly spread the remaining rice over chickpea. You got the idea right?? We were putting the chickpea and rice and stuff in layers!

Before putting the pot of rice into oven, sprinkle saffron milk over the surface of rice. (add few drops of yellow colouring if desire).

Note:You could also fried 2 onion until brown, take out half to substitute fried shallot.


Cover the cooker with lid, bake at 350F for 30-35 minutes, leave it in the oven for another 5 minutes after the time is up.



After 5 minutes, take out the cooker, mixed chickpea and rice together. Its done!



Healthy and yummy Chickpea Biryani!



中文版,For Chinese, Click --> 鹰嘴豆手抓饭

6 comments:

  1. Hi there, greetings from Love2cook Malaysia! :D

    Tried your Vietnamese Spicy Lemongrass Chicken, turned out really good! Scheduled for tomorrow's posting. Thanks for sharing the recipe.

    You have an amazing space here, make me drool ever since I entered. That briyani..drools!

    Loved your profile pic, is that you? ;)

    Stay in touch!

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  2. Thanks Love2cook.... yeah the profile pic is me.. on my wedding day... :)

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  3. wowww.. that is flattering... the picture hardly show 1/3 of my face lar..

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  4. Haha, I knew you'd say that! You still looking gorgeous with that 1/3 image of yours ;)

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  5. Thanks... just showed my husband your version of lemongrass chicken... he said it looks good!

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