How One of NYC’s Best Indian Chefs Makes Biryani

[upbeat music]

Hey guys, this is Chintan Kiran Pandya,

the chef/owner at Dhamaka

of Unapologetic Foods in New York City,

and today we are at Dhamaka kitchen,

trying to make the perfect version of biryani

that we believe it is.

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I'm based out of New York City.

We have a bunch of Indian restaurants.

Every restaurant focuses on different part of India.

We are making a biryani today,

and one of the cooking process in finalizing the biryani

is called the dum cooking.

This means the cooking in its own steam.

Biryani is basically a dish where you have a protein,

chicken, goat, lamb, you can have beef,

and then you have rice.

So it's a layer of these things mixed together,

and you have it.

My mouth is watering right now, actually.

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So I think the first and foremost process

that we want to start with is frying the onions.

This is the fried onion, which goes more

like a layered thing, it's a garnish kind of a thing.

In a subcontinent cooking, it's always red onions,

and it's got a very stronger smell,

it's got a very stronger taste than a white onion.

It needs to be around this thin.

When I fry it, it fries at 325, it will fry evenly.

If it's thicker, it will get a golden brown color

on the outside, but the inside would still be a little raw.

To get the even frying, we need to cut it thin.

You have to stand there and see how it fries,

and once it's golden brown, you take it out.

That is chef Vijay. He works with us.

His passion in life is

to cook the best possible biryani in this world.

[Interviewer] And does he do it?

Not better than me.

[both chuckle]

We are looking for this crispiness,

little golden brown color.

Not too dark, not too light.

But if you see this one, it's totally done.

[Interviewer] Yeah, it's gorgeous.

So we are just gonna chop up a little of these tomatoes.

This is for the curry that we are cooking.

So this is the base of the chicken biryani,

to get a little bit of sourness and also for the liquid.

We need some diced onions.

I prefer my biryani to be a little bit spicy,

so I add a little bit more slivers of green chilies into it.

So I'm slicing it longer like this,

because with this, somebody who doesn't want it

can just take it off the thing,

and I think this imparts a better flavor in the biryani

than the, you know, the round ones.

So we have everything prepped

over here nearly for our biryani.

We need to do a very important step now,

which is wash our rice and soak it,

and by that time, we start doing other things over here.

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So what Vijay is doing here,

chef Vijay is doing over here is he is taking up the rice.

We are gonna wash the rice and then soak the rice

before we cook it for the biryani.

We are using a basmati rice today,

and it's like a old basmati rice, it's 10 to 12 years old.

The older it is, the more expensive it is,

and the better flavor and texture it will have.

The basmati rice is a longer grain rice,

and it's not very starchy.

This is the starch which is coming out,

which we want to take it off.

From the farm the rice comes,

it's got lot of husk and everything,

and so there might be some impurities,

so you wash it up and soak it.

What also happens with the soaking is

it also helps with the cooking.

I think basmati rice has a beautiful flavor.

It absorbs a lot of flavor from any

of the accompaniment which you'll have with it.

So this is gonna sit for 30 minutes.

We'll put the water for boiling on the side.

By that time, we'll start cooking our chicken.

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We actually don't have the word curry

in our cuisine, actually.

It's a base of the biryani,

something which has got a little liquid to it.

So we are gonna make our chicken,

which is basically the base of it, it's a chicken curry.

What we are doing is adding some ghee into it.

Ghee is the clarified butter,

and it is a integral part of this recipe, actually.

110%, tastes far more better than butter any day.

We're gonna add some spices over here,

so this is a bay leaf, black cardamom,

that's a green cardamom, and then we have the mace.

This is a nutmeg, and mace is something

that covers the nutmeg.

And then we have some cloves over here.

We have our diced onions over here,

I'm gonna add it inside it.

The onions are cut very finely,

and we want to cook it as long as possible.

If we don't keep on stirring it,

it will stick to the bottom and it will burn it.

You see how the color is changing?

That's a ginger garlic paste,

so it's 50% ginger, 50% garlic.

So as soon as I add the ginger garlic paste into it,

that's when you'll start, you know, getting the aromas off.

So I've added some turmeric powder,

I'm adding some chili powder into it.

So now I added in the tomatoes inside it,

so we are now gonna cook it.

The unique property of the chili powder is

that this one is very, I would say, neutrally spliced,

but gives a very good deep red color to the dish.

So now, you see the tomato is getting cooked,

it's getting a little mashy.

This is what we are looking for.

This is a whole chicken, but you can use chicken,

whole legs cut on the bone with that.

Lot of flavor in a meat is inside the bone.

We traditionally cooked everything on the bone,

because I think it imparts a better flavor to it,

stronger taste to it, actually,

so that's why I prefer doing everything on the bone.

So that's some whisked yogurt.

So what yogurt will do is it will add the body to this dish

and get everything together,

so all your spices, onion, tomatoes,

powdered things, everything together.

What we prefer is a Greek yogurt, full fat Greek yogurt.

Salt.

The most important ingredient.

So the chicken is out of our way,

it's gonna get cooked away, I have it on the slow fire.

We'll keep our eye on it, so it's okay.

What we have over here is we are boiling the water,

and it's just a regular New York tap water,

there's no type of water.

[Chintan chuckles] [crew laughs]

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So, you know guys, because this video is

about how you can do it at home,

I would say that you have to multi-skill yourself,

you cannot do one step at a time.

So what you do is you start off with this,

you can just leave it on its own,

it's getting cooked over there on a slow heat.

Let it cook. You don't have to disturb it or anything.

I have the water over here.

I'm just gonna add some salt to it,

and then we add some ghee.

I'm adding some cumin, the mace, what we saw before,

we have some cinnamon sticks, dried bay leaf,

some cloves, some green cardamom, and we just boil it.

So this becomes like a flavorful stock,

and that's where we'll boil our rice in now.

Obviously, so we have the soaked rice,

I've drained the water out,

just gonna add the rice inside this water now.

So it's infused with a lot of flavors,

so when you boil the rice inside it,

obviously, water is gonna expand the grain,

and also the flavor goes inside the rice.

If you ask me how much time it takes cook,

it's not like flipping a burger,

where it will be two minutes,

flip the burger and it's cooked.

No, every rice is different,

every batch of rice will come out different,

so I always say, there's no specific time you need to know.

Like, we'll show you what it's done and not done.

So I'm trying to put the grain over here,

and then you just do it this.

You see there's a little bite left to it?

This is what we are looking for.

We need it 70 to 75, or between 70 to 80% cooked,

and rest 20% will be cooking inside that pot

when we put it inside the oven.

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So we have our rice ready over here, the chicken ready,

but yes, one still component is still left,

which is the jhol.

So we call it a jhol. Basically means a liquid.

So it's equal amount of butter and cream,

some saffron inside it.

This is to layer up the biryani,

and it will give the different color to the rice

and also a lot of flavor to the rice.

As I said, it's a very celebratory dish,

and one of the key component of the dish is saffron,

and you'll see how the rice will be little golden

when it's cooked with the saffron inside it,

so that's the reason for it.

Just for the perspective of people who don't know,

saffron is more expensive than gold,

and so you use it in a very limited quantity.

I have seen a lot of people,

they just throw saffron on a dish.

It doesn't do anything to that dish.

You need to know how do you integrate the saffron

within your dish.

So if you see, basically, jhol was only cream and butter,

but now when you see, when you added the saffron,

it's got that color, which is a saffron color.

So saffron on its own will never have a flavor,

but you have to use a medium of fat or dairy

or water to get that flavor inside it.

So, guys, all the components of this dish are ready,

so we have our rice ready over here,

we have the chicken curry ready over here,

we have the jhol ready over here,

so now the final and the finale of it is

we are gonna build up the biryani.

The magic starts.

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So, guys, now the final part of building up the dish,

we have this beautiful clay pot,

which we gonna build up the entire dish

with the layers in there.

Goes on top of it, we'll seal it up with the dough

and cook it inside the oven.

The good biryani will always be cooked in a clay pot,

and then you can just scrape it around

and you'll see how it comes out, it doesn't stick to it.

If you don't have a clay pot,

something that you can find in the market very easily

is a dutch oven.

This one has actually given me a better result

than any other pot that I've tried in the market.

So let's start building it, guys.

So this is the jhol, as we spoke about.

So you need a certain amount of moisture on the bottom,

because if I put the rice directly on the bottom,

it's gonna heat up, and there are chances

it might start sticking to it.

So this basically is a layer of fat which heats up,

and it provides that moisture to the dish.

Now we are gonna add some rice to it.

I'm gonna add some golden fried onions over here now.

It's not gonna remain crisp

by the time it gets cooked finally,

but it will impart a lot of flavor.

We'll eat it together and you'll understand why.

So now I'm gonna add some ginger juliennes over here,

very finely cut, fresh ginger juliennes.

And now we are gonna add the slit green chilies over here.

I'm adding some fresh cilantro over here, some mint.

Now we are gonna add the chicken.

Chicken is cooked. Yes, it's fully cooked.

I'm just arranging the pieces over here.

So it creates a one whole layer of the chicken over here.

So I'm gonna add a little jhol again to it.

I'm gonna take some of the gravy from here,

and I'm gonna put it over it.

I'm gonna add one more little layer of rice over here.

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Again, some fried onion.

You have some ginger juliennes,

slit green chilies,

some mint over here, some cilantro.

Just gonna add a little bit more of gravy over here.

Just gonna top it off with a little more rice on top,

and that's a spoon of the jhol.

A lot of the food that is cooked

in our culture is meant for communal dining.

So we expect this for like,

if I'm hungry, I might eat it on my own the entire thing,

but ideally, it's for four people,

so please excuse me on my eating habits.

So that's a regular dough.

It could be any form of a dough.

What I'm gonna do is I'm gonna line it up over here.

So it's a dough which is basically some flour, water,

and a little oil and salt.

We have this dough now evenly around it.

I'm gonna seal it up.

So our pot is ready now.

It'll start throwing out steam,

and the steam starts going on top.

With all the layers inside it, all the flavors in there,

it starts going up, but it cannot escape outside,

so it keeps on going inside, and that keeps on revolving,

and what will happen is

that will actually infuse all the flavors together.

This is called the dum cooking,

but if I don't put the dough around it,

a hundred percent chance is

that this steam will start escaping,

and it will not taste, the same dish will taste different.

So we have it inside the oven,

it's gonna cook for 20, 25 minutes.

I'm very hungry right now,

they haven't fed me anything while doing this,

so I'm gonna eat the entire biryani on my own.

So it's been close to 25 minutes now.

Let's look at the crust.

I think we are ready.

The crust looks insane.

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It looks amazing.

The rice has soaked up the jhol, the curry and everything.

We're gonna mix it up,

and it will all come together soon and within few minutes.

I actually enjoy eating most

of the Indian food with my hands.

That's how I've been brought up,

that's culturally what we do.

If you see everything as mixed together, everything is,

and when I look at the saffron,

the way it's within the rice and everything,

the way I love to do it is,

I take up a chunk of the meat out of the bone,

I have my meat, and then I'll take a little bit of rice

with all the things inside it,

onion, mint, cilantro, green chili, and.

[mellow jazzy music]

The fun part is you can taste each

and every ingredient on its own,

but when you do this, it's pure magic, trust me.

I don't think so there's a way you can explain these things

that how they come together,

why they come together or something.

It just happens.

[mellow jazzy music]

Very simple dish. Just follow the rules.

Just do it a very simple way,

and it will come out phenomenal.

Vijay, what do you think about the biryani, man?

I think it's super good. Yeah.

Thank you.

I couldn't done better than him,

so yeah, I'm learning from him.

I'm sure this year, he'll get a good bonus.

Yeah, that's why I said it.

[mellow jazzy music]

Once we post this video,

there'll be a lot of hate messages,

because every part of the country

and every part of the subcontinent

makes a biryani in a specific way,

and they're so attached to it, they're so personal about it

that they'll say, this is a wrong way of making it.

My mother makes it this way,

my grandmother makes it this way,

my this one makes it this way,

and that is the right way of making it.

All of us has a different version of a perfect biryani.

[Interviewer] What do you have to say

to the people leaving hate messages in the comments?

I still love them.