Recipe: Chicken Biryani

So delicious. Recipe below the cut.

Chicken is embedded in this rice... somewhere

Disclaimer: This recipe is going to be a bit gangsta; I can't translate a few of the ingredients.

Materials (this feeds a family of 3-4)
whole chicken
basmati rice
4 small tomatoes
1 large red onion
green chilies, a handful/more depending on spice desired
cilantro, handful
pudina ("mint leaves"), tiny handful
garlic - entire bulb, maybe more
ginger - same amount as garlic
thyr ("yogurt/curd" - not sweet or salted. preferably thick)
turmeric powder
pepper
salt
clove
cinnamon
cadaman (pistachio looking seasoning seed thing)

Recipe
1. Prepare vegetable ingredients:

1. Cut the red onion long ways - into thin slices in one direction.
2. Seed and ut one tomato into small pieces.
3. Cut cilantro/separate cilantro leaves from the stem. 
4. Cut mint leaves/pudina into small pieces.
5. Peel all of the cloves of garlic.
6. Skin the ginger.
7. Take the stems off of the green chilis

Red onion, tomato, cilantro

2. Blend garlic, ginger, and green chilies in a blender to make paste (can be a bit chunky if necessary); add pepper balls/pepper to blend; don't add water - if it doesn't blend well enough add a little bit of onion to blending mixture.
3. Prepare chicken:

1. Take skin off chicken, cut into small pieces (not too small- the size of chunky chicken you want in your biryani).
2. Clean the chicken with water, and coat it with turmeric powder. This helps "clean" the chicken.

4. Coat chicken with curd - just enough to coat all of the chicken. To this curd, add the garlic, ginger, green chili (and possibly onion) paste and mix will. Add turmeric powder and salt to this as well.

Chicken marination.... yum :O

5. Let the chicken marinate in this spicy curd mixture for as long as possible.
6. Prepare the rice:

1. Coat a pot with a little bit of oil (if you're Indian and know what ghee is, you can use that instead. Oil is a perfect substitute).
2. To the hot oil, add clove, cinnamon, and cadamum - not a lot, just a few pieces of each.
3. Add 3 cups of basmati rice and mix until all of the rice is slightly toasted, warm, and coated with oil. It shouldn't feel oily to touch but it should be enough so the rice is shiny. 

lightly toasted and seasoned rice. that dark spot is a bit of clove.

7. Once chicken is done marinating (it can marinate for as long or as little as you'd like - we didn't take breaks and wait for anything), coat another LARGE pot with a liberal amount of oil. This pot should be huge - this is what the biryani will be made in.
8. Add seasoning to the hot oil: curcumin, cadamum, cinnamon, fennel, clove, mysterious indian ingredients... I'm not sure what they're called and the packaging is in a different language so I can't even translate. I'm sure the biryani would taste fine without the unknown ones.

Cinnamon, cadamum, clove, fennel, and... mysterious other biryani ingredients

The starfish looking ingredient is pretty

9. Add the onion, stir until they are slightly translucent/brown.

BIG POT

caramelizing onions. don't be fooled by the amount of oil - this oil is necessary for ALL of the rice and chicken, too!

10. Add the tomatoes, salt, and a pinch of turmeric powder into the mix. The tomatoes will release a lot of liquid--it's fine. (This will cause the oil to sputter ferociously. s'all good homie).

onions, tomatoes, salt, turmeric

11. Once the tomatoes are tender, add the entire chicken marination into the pot. Add all of the excess curd, too. Mix well. Add chili powder to this for spice.

chicken marination into mixture

with chili powder added

12. Put it over a low-medium flame, close the pot, and wait ~20 minutes or until the chicken gets 3/4 cooked. Meanwhile, soak the rice in water--just enough to cover the rice.
13. The yogurt should become extremely liquid-y. Once this makes a liquid solution, drain ALL of the liquid from the chicken pot BUT SAVE IT. We want this liquid -- we are only draining it to MEASURE how much we have.

so much liquid released!!!

14. Once the amount of liquid is measured (in terms of cups), pour it back into the pot and add cilantro.

15. We have 3 cups of rice. The ratio of rice:water is 1:2, so we need 6 cups of liquid in the pot. Measure how much was drained, and add enough water to it so that there are 6 cups total (better to have a little less. I went with 4 cups total--a lot less, but this worked).
16. Drain rice completely of water it was soaking in, and add it to the pot.

Full pot - chicken and rice with flavorful broth

17. Cook! Close the lid on the pot (leave a little gap for ventilation/steam) and wait until the rice is cooked. The chicken should be tender, the rice flavorful, and the biryani delicious!