Dum Briyani In Pressure Cooker Recipe

Some two weeks ago the Mister had discovered the amazing world of youtube video recipes. And he was totally hooked on watching these two desi Indian guys making briyani in the pressure cooker in a very humble setup. Despite it all the briyani looked so good and even the cook exclaimed 'it smells so good I could dig into it now', and there it got us salivating.

A quick trip to the market later we got all the ingredients ready and roaring to go, or rather eat!!

So here's me trying to be as pictorial as possible (well, because I did not get pics for every step, but I hope this helps) to explain the steps and process as we get along.

It starts with 3 major preps, the fried onion, the chicken marination, and the parboiled basmati. At the end of it they just come together in a perfect harmony.

Firstly you need a mountainful of chopped onions, and an obscene amount of chopped coriander and mint leaves. Separate the chopped herbs into 2 equal parts.

Fry the onion in good amount of oil mixed with ghee.

For the marination, you need cumin, coriander and chilli powder. And some yogurt. You also need turmeric powder but here I used fresh turmeric pounded old-style. Add all these marination into the chicken. Also some lemon juice. 

Add 1 part of the chopped coriander and mint mixture into the chicken marination, and let it sit for 30 to 60 minutes.

In the meantime prepare a pot of water to parboil the basmati rice. Add some cardamom, cloves, cumin and cinnamon stick. Also add in the remaining chopped herbs, and then your desired amount of basmati rice. Let it boil to cook the basmati halfway.

In the meantime your onion would have browned nicely.

 You can turn off the heat for the onion, and drain them out.

Transfer the marination to the bottom of a pressure cooker. Add the fried onion (take only half, keep half for later) and give it a nice stir. You can also add in a few spoonfuls of the oil that we used to fry the onion.

By now the basmati rice would be half done. strain it all out, including the spices. Spread one layer of the basmati rice onto the chicken marination.

Top it with the fried onion, some ghee, saffron water (we didn't have this so just did some turmeric water) and milk. And then the remaining amount of the basmati, and the same ingredients yet again.

Tighten the lid, and let it cook for 15 minutes, and turn off the heat. I let it sit for additional 30 minutes before eating, and the chicken turned out so tender and full of flavour!

This pic of our final done briyani does not justify the amazing taste it had. I learnt one thing that the onion should be cooked slightly brown so that it continues cooking further in the pressure cooker later on. 

Served the briyani with some raita and boiled eggs, and we were so hungry we dug in, forgetting to take any final picture for this recipe. Well this goes to show how damn good it was! Happy trying!