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Biryani is considered one of the most well-known Indian & Middle Eastern rice dishes. It is a robust dish in which meat is cooked in a combination of spices (known as a masala) and then combined in layers with plain basamati rice. Biryani can be prepared with either bone-in chicken or cubed leg of lamb (it may even be made without meat), and it is normally served as a main course of a feast or a big family supper. Among the most popular styles of biryani is Hyderabadi biryani. Hyderabadi biryani is a kind of biryani that consists of marinating the meat in a mixture of plain yogurt, vegetable oil, and spices and then baking the marinated meat with semi-cooked rice. This differs from other kinds of biryani in which the lamb (or chicken) and masala are cooked in vegetable or canola oil and then layered with rice and baked. Unfortunately, I feel that there are quite a few aspects of Hyderabadi biryani that frankly make it less flavorful than other forms of biryani. This is where I believe Hyderabadi biryani goes wrong: 1) The spices need to be cooked in vegetable or canola oil. This is likely the most critical error that Hyderabadi biryani makes. Simmering the fundamental biryani seasonings (e.g., ginger garlic paste, chili powder, turmeric, clove) in oil permits these spices & aromatics to unleash their full flavor into the masala - well beyond what is produced when they are merely incorporated with cold low fat yogurt and oil. If the spices are not heated up, then the necessary chemical reactions that release a lot of the flavor simply can't occur. Hyderabadi biryani misses out on a great deal of flavor because of this error. 2) Cooking raw lamb or chicken for forty mins doesn't make it tender. Almost all Hyderabadi biryani recipes recommend that the marinated yogurt / meat mixture be added straight into a pot and then baked in the oven with the par-boiled basmati rice. This doesn't produce tender meat. The only method of getting your meat tender is to slow cook the meat for a minimum of 1.5 hours. These biryani recipes that recommend merely thirty to forty mins of cooking honestly will not get it done. 3) Flavoring the basmati rice. Unfortunately, the most flavor I've found added to the plain basmati rice in a Hyderabadi biryani recipe was merely a handful cardamom pods or spices put into the water in which the rice is boiling. Doing this will lend the plain rice a subtle aroma, however flavoring the water won't give any serious flavor to the rice itself. To really flavor plain biryani rice, you have to incorporate a bit of the masala to the par-boiled rice when you're preparing it for baking. So while Hyderabadi biryani may be the most popular type of biryani, in my mind it's certainly not the most delicious.
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