Preparation:

• Wash and soak basmati rice in clean water for 30 minutes

How to marinate chicken:

• In a mixing bowl take washed chicken pieces, add curd.
• Add salt, ginger garlic paste, turmeric powder, and chilli powder.
• Mix all the spices with chicken and keep aside for 30mins to one hour.

Recipe to make chicken dum biryani:

How to boil basmati rice:

• In a big kadai take one ltr of water and boil it.
• Add all the whole spices given in the ingredients.
• Bring the water to roll boiling temperature and add the soaked and drained basmati rice.
• Add half a teaspoon of salt and half boil the basmati rice for 5 to 7 minutes.
• Check the consistency of the rice by pressing one cooked grain. Rice should be only half cooked.
• Now drain the water from the rice and remove all the whole spices. Keep the half cooked rice aside.

How to make biryani:

• Heat oil in another kadai, add fennel seeds, onions.
• Fry onions until deep brown color. You can save some browned onions for garnishing. Add green chillies.
• When onions are nice brown color, add ginger garlic paste and fry until the raw flavor completely goes off.
• Now add chopped tomatoes and cook until soft.
• Add chopped mint leaves and coriander leaves and cook them for two minutes.
• you can add a tablespoon of curd at this stage and mix with masala for a nice texture. This is optional.
• Add chilli powder. Remember we added chilli powder at marination too and also we added green chillies, hence use only the required amount of chilli powder.
• Now add the marinated chicken pieces and mix with the masala.
• Add required salt for the biryani.
• Now reduce the flame to low temperature and cover with a lid.
• Let the chicken cook in low heat for 5 minutes to absorb all the spices nicely.
• Meanwhile, boil around 2 ltr of water in a separate vessel for keeping Dum.
• After 5 minutes and chicken is half cooked, add the half cooked basmati rice, which we kept aside.
• Do not mix or stir. Just layer the rice on top of the chicken masala as shown.
• Maintain the temperature in a low state during the whole process.
• Pour a cup of super-hot water into the rice. No need to mix. Use the same cup which is used for measuring rice.
• Sprinkle some mint leaves on top. Close with a tight lid.

How to give dum:

• Remove the biryani kadai from the stove, heat an old flat tawa and keep the biryani kadai on top of it.
• This is double layered cooking. keep in medium flame.
• On top of the lid keep a heavy vessel with hot water(which is ready for dum in the meantime).
• Keep this dum setup in medium temperature up to ten minutes.
• After ten minutes switch off, open the lid and garnish with browned onions. You can use a tsp of ghee also for garnishing.
• Serve this delicious restaurant-style Hyderabadi chicken Dum Biryani with onion raita.