This article is about the rice dish. For shrimp bhuna 2020 film, see Biriyaani.

Not to be confused with Isfahan beryani. Biryani is one of the most popular dishes in South Asia, as well as among the diaspora from the region. Similar dishes are also prepared in other parts of the world such as in Iraq, Thailand, and Malaysia. Persian was used as an official language in different parts of medieval India by various Islamic dynasties. The exact origin of the dish is uncertain. Another theory claims that the dish was prepared in India before the first Mughal emperor Babur conquered India.

According to Pratibha Karan, who wrote the book Biryani, biryani is of Mughal origin, derived from pilaf varieties brought to the Indian subcontinent by Arab traders. She speculates that the pulao was an army dish in medieval India. Armies would prepare a one-pot dish of rice with whichever meat was available. According to Vishwanath Shenoy, the owner of a biryani restaurant chain in India, one branch of biryani comes from the Mughals, while another was brought by the Arab traders to Malabar in South India. There are various apocryphal stories dating the invention to Shah Jahan’s time but Rana Safvi, the distinguished historian, says she could only find a recipe from the later Mughal period, from Bahadur Shah Zafar’s time. Other historians who have gone through texts say that the first references to biryani only appear around the 18th century.

If direct heat is used, there is a risk that the food layer in contact with the vessel bottom may get burned while the interior’s contents are still raw. This risk is minimized by sustained baking with moderate heat, or very slow cooking on low direct heat. This approach, however, increases cooking time considerably. One method is cooking the dish “blind”, with the cooking vessel sealed, so one cannot monitor cooking progress—it takes understanding of the raw foods used, the heat required to cook those raw foods, and how the climate can affect the cooking process. Hence making kacchi biryani requires a seasoned hand. Hyderabadi vegetable biryani served in Tampa, U. There are many types of biryani, whose names are often based on their region of origin.

For example, Sindhi biryani developed in the Sindh region of what is now Pakistan, and Hyderabadi biryani developed in the city of Hyderabad in South India. Vaniyambadi biryani is a variety cooked in the neighboring towns of Ambur and Vaniyambadi in the Tirupattur district of the northeastern part of Tamil Nadu, which has a high Muslim population. It has a distinctive aroma and is considered light on the stomach. The usage of spice is moderate and curd is used as a gravy base. It also has a higher ratio of meat to rice. Beef biryani, as the name implies, uses beef as the meat.