Apologies to our Indian friends and readers, this is another heavily anglicised ethnic dish. It is the ultimate easy dish to put together, can contain any amount of home grown veggies and works really well by itself or (even better) as an accompaniment to another Indian curry such as our Indian Style Veggie Curry. It is also very energy efficient, the rice cooker using only as much power as is needed to cook it then turning itself to 'heat'.
I do cheat and use a commercial biryani spice mix which is blended and sold by a local spice company and which we get packaging free into our own containers. There is no reason you could not make your own from scratch if you want to though. (I just haven’t gotten around to it yet!)
Ingredients
Two cups basmati rice
3 cups water
Two cups diced or small veg eg peas, corn niblets, broccoli or cauliflower florets and/or diced carrot, choko, zucchini, or beans cut into 5mm lengths.
Diced onion
Knob butter
Handful sultanas
Handful unsalted/raw cashews
2 dessertspoonsful biryani spice mix
Method
Place the butter in the rice cooker and turn it onto ‘cook’ with the lid in place. Once the butter is melted add the diced onion and cook until translucent.
Add the other vegetables and fry for a few minutes, turn off rice cooker. Add the basmati rice and water, stir. Add in the biryani spice mix and stir to distribute.Turn rice cooker on to ‘cook’.
Once the rice cooker has turned off, fluff up the biryani and serve.
It really is as simple as that and the result is wonderful! Linda loves it and I cook it every week or two.
