Veg Biryani – A Complete Guide

by dassana

in Hyderabadi Cuisine

One of my favorite food is the vegetable biryani. My mom makes the best veg biryanis and I have seen her many times cooking biryani with a lot of love and care. You really have to cook the biryani with a lot of love and care. There should be no hurry and cooking a biryani takes up some time. Yet it is worth it. It is one of the most grand, noble and delectable recipe from India.

The biryanis which I have seen my mom making at home have always been cooked on dum. When I saw on the internet, that food bloggers have recipes for pressure cooked biryanis, I was amazed as well as shocked. How can one cook a biryani in a pressure cooker. For a biryani to be a biryani….. it has to be cooked on dum. The biryanis which are pressure cooked, do not remain a biryani anymore….. at least they should not be called biryani.

An authentic vegetable biryani is always slow cooked on dum. This cooking on dum gives the biriyani its uniqueness and originality. This is how the biryani has the beautiful medley of the aromas, flavors and tastes caused by the blending of the ingredients used in making it. Now what is dum cooking or dum pukht?
Dum Pukht is a technique of cooking in steam by not allowing the steam to pass. Dum Pukht literally means choking off the steam. The food is kept in a sealed container – usually clay pots (also known as handi in India) which are sealed tightly with wheat flour dough. This does not allow the steam to pass. The food gets cooked in its own steam and juices on a slow fire infusing the flavors and aroma of its own herbs and spices in the food. Nutrients are not lost in this process and thus the food is nutritious too.
This tradition of dum pukht originated in Persia where the dish was prepared, sealed and then buried in hot sand to mature. Dum Pukht is part of the Avadhi/Awadhi Cuisine which is from the city of Lucknow – Uttar Pradesh. Nowadays Dum Pukht is also used in Hyderabadi, Mughlai and Punjabi cuisines. Some of the popular dum recipes are : Dum Aloo, Mushroom Biryani E Dum Pukht, Handi Veg Biryani, Dum Chicken biryani, Phaldari Kofta.

This Hyderabadi Vegetable Biryani Recipe is one of the best biryani I have made so far. I have also cooked my mom’s version and that too comes out great. I will also post her recipe one day. There is also the Lucknowi Biryani, Mughlai Biryani, Kashmiri Biryani. They all have their own tastes and flavor.
This Vegetable Biryani recipe is light, mild and delicious. In fact, it came out so well and tasted lip smackingly yum……. that I went for a second helping of it. The rice grains were fluffy, cooked well and separate.

The subtle flavors of the garam masala, onions and curd were so infused in the vegetables. Each bite of the vegetable had the taste, flavor and aroma of the masala as well as the unique taste of the vegetable. All I can say is that each bite of this hyderabadi dum vegetable biryani recipe was heavenly.

As far as the ingredients are concerned, its best to use all the ingredients as mentioned below. Personally, I did not have mace, so i was not able to use it. And for the almonds, I was too lazy to blanch, peel and slice the almonds, so I have not added the almonds.
This veg biryani recipe post is my most lengthy post till now with maximum pictures. I have included step by step recipe details with pictures for this post. I just did not want to write a simple post with just one or two pictures for this beautiful veg biryani dish. I hope you enjoy making this recipe as much as I enjoyed and also, that these pictures inspire you to cook not only the biryani but any recipe.

Step by Step Method to make the Hyderabad Veg Biryani Recipe:

Cooking the Rice:

• Pick and clean the rice in running water. Soak the rice in water for 30 minutes.
• Now you can microwave or cook or pressure cook the rice. You have to cook the rice till its 3/4th done. The rice should not be fully cooked but almost cooked.
• In a pan, pressure cooker or a microwave cooker, add the pre-soaked rice, all the spices mentioned above with some salt.

• Cook till the rice till is almost done. Fluff the rice and keep it aside.

Making the Vegetable Biryani Gravy:

• Traditionally biryani were made in clay pots, known as handis. If you have a clay pot, you could use it. I did not have a clay pot or handi. But I have a pressure cooker shaped like a handi, so I used it. If you have a handi shaped pot made up of aluminium, you could use it also.
• Heat ghee in the handi. Add all whole garam masala: caraway seeds, cardamoms, mace, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves. Fry the garam masala till they crackle.

• Now add the onions.

• Fry the onions till golden brown. Add the green chilli, ginger and garlic. Fry for a minute.

• Add the turmeric and red chili powder.

• Give the mixture a stir. Now add the vegetables and stir for a minute.

• Add the curd/yoghurt. Stir and then add 3/4 cup water plus salt. Stir the mixture well.

• If using a pressure cooker for cooking the veggies, then cover the cooker with a lid and pressure cook for 2 minutes. If not using a pressure cooker, then bring the entire vegetable mixture to a boil. Then simmer until the vegetables are cooked.

• Add the dry fruits – almonds, raisins and cashew nuts to the vegetable gravy.

• Check the salt. Add more if required.

Assembling the Veg Biryani and slow cooking it on Dum:

• Warm the milk. Add saffron to it. Let this saffron-milk mixture cool. Add the curd to this mixture and mix well.

• In the same handi with the cooked vegetables, sprinkle half each of saffron-flavored curd/yoghurt, mint and coriander leaves.

• Now spread half of the rice.

• Sprinkle the remaining saffron-flavored curd/yoghurt.

• add the chopped mint and coriander leaves.

• Spread the remaining rice. I stopped here, but if you want you can make more layers. The rice should be the last layer.

• Sprinkle rose-water. This is optional and you could skip it. Place a moist cloth on top.

• Cover with a lid.

• Then seal with wheat flour dough. I was too lazy to make the wheat dough, so I kept a heavy weight on the lid.

• This is one technique that you could use for dum cooking if you do not have the wheat flour dough.
• Place the sealed handi on the gas stove at low fire.
• Cook for 20-25 minutes more. If you think and feel, that you do not want the base to get burnt while cooking the biryani… there is a technique for avoiding this disaster.
• Right at the beginning, before dum cooking the biryani……. take a tava/griddle and heat it on medium flame. Now keep the sealed handi on the tava. Keep the flame to the lowest and cook for 20-25 minutes.
• For the first 15 minutes, I dum cooked the biryani on direct low flame and for the last 10 minutes, I placed the handi on the tava and cooked on a low flame.
• You could also preheat the oven to 190 degree celsius and then bake the biryani in the oven for 15-20 minutes. Please remember to use an oven proof utensil like the pyrex ones for baking in the oven. You will have to assemble the biryani as mentioned above in the oven proof utensil and then bake it.
• While serving the veg biryani, make sure you equally serve the vegetables as well as rice. Here is a pic of the layers seen inside the handi.

• Serve the yummy hyderabadi veg biryani with your choice of raita, onion-mint salad-kuchumber, mango pickle, roasted papad.

• Other accompaniments for this Hyderabad Veg Biryani would be Hyderabadi Mirchi ka Salan…. the way the Biryani is traditionally served in Hyderabad.