Veg Biryani

Made Veg Biryani today, following recipe from here. I prefer to pickup recipes from blogs than professional sites, just thinking that blogs are real experiences of real people cooking for themselves. Hope to get some real tips.

After making it this time, I wanted to note down some things I did differently to remember later, but then writing a recipe is a big job, so just doing ditto to original recipe and adding on a few observations as a note to self.

-          2 tumbler rice is usually enough for a family, with some leftover too. Then the proportion becomes 3 potatoes, 3 or 4 tomatoes (I like more tomato in anything, but then it is just me), 1 capsicum, 3-4 carrots, 10-12 beans, 3 onions, quarter cup green peas, 2 green chilies (more spicy), few curry leaves, ginger garlic paste. I got tired of taking part of the Gobi and it gets so messy to cleanup, so replaced it with capsicum. Tried Brinjal as add on once.

-          Wash the rice at the very beginning and soak. That way by the time the vegetables are ready, rice is soaked well.

-          Talking about time, I don’t know how these folks finish cooking in 40 mins. For me, start to finish, including washing up dishes, takes nearly 2 hours. I am extra slow, getting the vegetables to an even size and shape, doing one thing at a time, but still.

-          Spices – good for the smell and garnishing, but family hate it when they bite on a clove or cardamom by mistake, so started avoiding it altogether.  When I get more adventurous, started adding some cashews. Need to try out adding mint and coriander leaves.

-          Pressure cooker method had higher chances of success, in terms of getting the biryani with right amount of consistency. But it tastes less like biryani and more like pulao. Tried cooking in the pot once, but didn’t really get that much of a difference. More experimentation to do to get it right.