My homemade Hyderabadi Chicken Biryani is bursting with flavour. It's one of my favourite dishes that I learned when I trained in the Taj Hotel in India. 

Everyday we would prepare two huge pots for dinner service. Working in the kitchen, my mouth would always be watering from the exotic aroma of the biryani. The biryani I make is the Hyderabadi dum biryani and I have a special Le Crueset French pot which I use it to make the biryani.

About Biryani:

In a very simple terminology, Biryani is a dish made up of rice and meat / fish / Vegetables where they all are cooked together in one pot. Sometimes the rice and meat / fish / veggies are cooked separately to a certain extent and then mixed in one pot to finish off together. Sometimes the rice is added as raw at a certain time of cooking or the rice could be cooked and then mixed to finish off the cooking.

Biryani is derived from the Farsi word 'Birian'. Based on the name, and cooking style (Dum), one can conclude that the dish originated in Persia and/or Arabia. It could have come from Persia via Afghanistan to North India. It could have also been brought by the Arab traders via the Arabian sea to Calicut which is the southern part of India. They all have different styles. Even within India, Biryani made in the Northern states would be very different to the Biryani made in the Southern states.