Biryani

Biryani is basmati rice layered with spiced meat and slow-cooked until the grains take on the flavour of everything beneath them. It is India's great festival rice dish, and the spicing, the meat, and even the cooking vessel change dramatically from one city to the next.

Its roots trace back to Persian pilaf, carried into the subcontinent through Mughal courts and Central Asian trade — but what grew from that seed over the centuries that followed is not a copy of the dish it came from. Hyderabadi, Lucknowi (Awadhi), Kolkata and a dozen other regional styles each became a distinct culinary tradition in its own right, different enough from one another that no single version can fairly claim to be the biryani.

What it actually is

Basmati rice is parboiled separately from a meat curry — chicken, lamb, or a vegetable mix — often marinated first in yogurt, ginger, garlic and garam masala. The two are layered in a heavy pot with fried onions, saffron-soaked milk and ghee, then sealed and cooked on very low heat, or finished in the oven, so the rice finishes cooking in the steam trapped inside — a technique called dum.

Hyderabadi biryani cooks the raw marinated meat and rice together from the start; Lucknowi (Awadhi) biryani cooks the meat separately first, in a gentler, more fragrant style. Both are called biryani, and neither is a simplified version of the other.

How it's served

• Straight from the sealed pot, opened at the table so the steam and aroma escape in front of the guest.
• With raita and a simple salad, to cool the spice.
• Layered, not stirred, when plated — mixing it in the pot before serving loses the point of the layering.

Writing it on a menu

• Say which style — Hyderabadi, Lucknowi, or your own — since regulars who know the difference will ask.
• Note the dairy from the yogurt marinade and ghee.
• Flag whether a vegetarian version is available; it's a completely different, and just as traditional, biryani, not a substitution.
• Mention if it's cooked to order or from a large batch; a dum-sealed pot per table is a different (and slower) commitment than a tray kept warm.