Tamil Style Mutton Biryani

I am very lucky to be married to a guy who not only shares my passion for food, but is a fantastic cook as well. But even though both of us work full-time, somehow cooking is my responsibility in our house. It is not something that Siv demands, he doesn’t expect me to cook every day, he cooks when he is in the mood, and expects me to do the same. But I have a voice in my head that tells me that the kitchen is my domain, and cooking is my responsibility! I consider myself a modern, independent, free spirited woman, but I figure that I’m very traditional when it comes to my role in the kitchen. Siv does cook a lot, but when he does, I feel like he is doing me a favor. Am I crazy? Does this make sense to anyone?

Anyway, ramblings aside, here is the Mutton Biryani Siv made this week,I am sharing the recipe as promised in my last post. His first attempt at making Biryani following his mom’s recipe.

Ingredients

• 1.5 lb goat or lamb meat cut into medium sized pieces
• To Grind:
  • 6 Dry Red chilies
  • 1″ Cinnamon
  • 1 tsp fennel seeds
  • 4 cardamom
  • 1 finger sized ginger
  • 6 cloves garlic
  • 1 onion thinly sliced
  • About 20 mint leaves
• 1 star anise
• 3 bay leaves
• 1″ cinnamon
• 3 cups Basmati Rice
• Salt to taste
• Oil
• Coconut milk 1/2 cup
• 1 tbsp Ghee (Clarified butter)

Method

Wash and soak the rice in cold water for at least 30 minutes.

Grind all the ingredients in the To Grind section to a smooth paste and keep aside.

In a pressure cooker, heat some oil and fry the mutton pieces along with the star anise, bay leaves and cinnamon stick.

Add the ground masala paste, salt and 1 cup of water and pressure cook the mutton. (3 minutes after the first whistle).

While the cooker is cooling down, in a big frying pan, heat the ghee, add soaked rice and a little bit of salt and fry well.

When the pressure cooker is cool enough to handle, open and measure the gravy in the mutton. We need total 5 cups of liquid including the gravy, coconut milk and water to cook 3 cups of rice. For example, if there is two cups of gravy in the mutton, add 1/2 cup coconut milk and 2 1/2 cups of water. Add the fried rice along with the required amount of hot water and coconut milk to the mutton in the pressure cooker.

Close the pressure cooker and cook till the first whistle. Switch off the stove and let stand till it cools down.

Delicious mutton biryani is ready. Garnish with coriander leaves, squeeze a fresh lime over the biryani and serve with cucumber raitha.

Since this is a traditional biryani recipe from his mom, this is made completely in the pressure cooker. I’ve tried a pressure cooker biryani recipe from Kitchen Wonders once, even though it tasted great, I kind of messed it up by overcooking the rice, so I went back to my regular oven method. But Siv made this perfect, you can see from the picture that the rice is not overcooked, may be he is a better cook than I am after all!

Technorati tags: Recipe, Tamil Recipes, Mutton Recipes, Biryani

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Category: India - Tamil Nadu, Lamb or Goat, Recipes, Rice Or Biryani