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Dear friends I have an earth shattering confession to make!!! I don’t cook any of my own meals ( just kidding 😀 ) … Since I’ve started posting up my food blog posts 2 or 3 weeks ago I’ve kinda screwed up twice. Well tonight is counted as one of those times though maybe not in the way you think. The other time the pumpkin, coconut curry I made ended up being a little too bland so I didn’t post up the recipe even if I’d taken all the photos. The kids wanted seconds of that one or maybe they were just really hungry. I ended up using way too little curry powder as I realised afterwards that nothing much had come out of the jar.

Read on you won’t believe what happened next!!! 😮 (I hate click bait)

Biryani ingredients

Getting all the ingredients together it looks like a lot. I came across a Chicken Biryani recipe the other day and started thinking to myself WOW I’ve got to try this. I actually had a jar of Pataks Biryani paste in the press. I’ve no idea why I bought it apart from maybe not really knowing what it was, apart from a curry of some kind.

For our ingredients we’ll want

  • Rice (300 grammes)
  • 1 large onion (Yes I’ve got 3 small ones here)
  • 1 large carrot … I’ve got 2 medium
  • 2 decent sized chicken breasts
  • a hand full of mushrooms
  • Raisins
  • 1 stock cube ( chicken in this case )
  • Cardamon seeds (just 4)
  • A cinnamon stick
  • 1 Bay leaf
  • Tumeric
  • Curry paste (I’m using one for Biryani here)

Get your onions chopped up finely and throw them into a heated pan with a good knob of butter (it’ll be a lot tastier) Add in 4 cardomon seeds and a cinnamon stick ( small ish ) We don’t want to eat any of these ingredients but we want to let them cook away with everything adding flavour.

Finely chop your onions

Chop your chicken into small bite sized pieces. I’m only using 2 chicken breasts here, you could easily use more again that’s down to your budget and how much meat vrs. veg you want.

Chop your chicken

Throw your chicken onto the pan as well and add in a teaspoon of tumeric.

Put your rice into some warm water. Rinse it, drain it and put it to the side you want to get as much starch out as possible.

Fry your chicken

Add in 3 to 4 table spoons of your curry paste. THIS is where I went wrong … I added in a bit too much and ended up adding half the jar of the paste to the pot. I reckon a quarter of the jar would be fine. You’ll always be able to add more the next time, once you’ve gotten the lay of the land / figured out just how spicy your curry is. You’ll want to fry up the paste for a few minutes with everything to get all the spices activated.

Add your paste

Add your grated mushrooms and carrots … if you’ve followed me you’ll know I do this quite a bit. The carrots grated will mean they cook a bit better in this. Add a decent handful or two of raisins. Add your stock cube, rice, and around 700ml of boiling water as well as your rice. Adjust the amount of water .. you want it runny as this will boil for a few minutes and then the rice will hopefully absorb all the liquid so you end up with a slightly dry mix at the end.

Add your liquid

Bring it to the boil and boil for 5 or 6 minutes with the lid on. Kill the heat and leave the lid on for another 10 or so minutes.

You’ll hopefully end up with something like the following as the water gets absorbed and it cooks more. Doing this in a cast iron type pot would be even better as it’d keep more heat and for longer.

Chicken Biryani

I tested it around now and I’d used way too much curry paste. I believe the word I said sounds similar to how the French word for seal sounds. Quickly some extra plain rice and peas were thrown on for the kids not very exciting but it’s dinner time. I ended up eating 2 decent portions of this. It was very tasty. It just wasn’t something we could give the kids as the kick in it was quite strong.

Serve this up with some naan bread and some popadums. I’ve heard a dash of yogurt would be good as well .. maybe I’ll try that tomorrow.. Add a sprinkle of corriander ( from our ever present frozen corriander stash)

Served chicken biryani