Chicken Dum Biryani

Ingredients:

For marination:

Chicken : 2 lb cut into medium sizes
yogurt: 2 tbsp
salt: according to your taste
turmeric: 1/2 tsp
chili powder: 1 tsp
coriander powder: 1 tsp
ginger, garlic paste: 1 tsp
garam masala: 1/2 tsp
mint: 1 hand full finely chopped
cilantro: 1 hand full finely chopped
fried onion: 1 whole
oil: 1 tbsp

Method:
Squeeze the water completely from chicken and marinate with rest of the ingredients for at least 4 hrs. I like to marinate overnight for better taste. If using drum sticks, make a slit in the chicken pieces for marination. Use thick yogurt so that marination sticks to the chicken properly.


For fried onions:
Cut the onion length wise, deep fry it until it turns brown in colour. Save half of the quantity for rice.

For rice:

Rice: 4 cups
Onion: 1
Tomato: 1
Chillies: 8 in number
Garam masala: 1/2 tsp
salt: according to taste
ginger, garlic paste: 1 tsp

Method:
In 1 tbsp oil, add green chillies. Then add onion & tomato. Saute it until raw smell goes. Add rest of the items and fry it for few mins.
Mean while wash the rice and leave the rice aside. Add 1:1 (rice:water) to make the rice half cooked.
Mix the fried items to the rice and start cooking the rice. Make sure rice gets only half cooked.

For Dum:
Grease the pan generously with oil/butter/ghee.
Arrange marinated raw chicken first, then half cooked rice, then fried onions. Repeat these layers.. Add finely chopped mint & coriander on top.
Close the pan tightly with aluminium foil.
Pre heat oven at 350 f and dun the biryani for 35 min.

You can mix pinch of saffron color in the milk and sprinkle it at the top of rice before putting it in the oven. This adds beautiful color to the biryani once it is done..