Talk:Biryani

Earliest know Biryani recipes - needs to be included in history

"Zer Berian-i-Noor Mahali Nu’ Digar" a 17th century biryani recipe

Meat: 1Kg

Ghee (Rughan-i-Zard): 125 Grams

Rice: 1 Kg

Cinnamon: 2 Grams

Cloves: 2 Grams

Cardamoms: 2 Grams

Saffron: 1 Gram

Ginger: 20 Grams

Garlic: 250 Grams

Salt: 60 Grams

Coriander: 20 Grams

Black Cumin: 2.5 Grams

PROCEDURE: Cut the meat into pieces. Mix salt with ginger juice. Wait for a few minutes. Mix the garlic. Wait for a while. (In a pan) Fry onions in 100 grams of ghee. Put the (chopped) garlic on the onion. Keep adding water soaked in cumin until all the water dries up. Put the chunks of meat and add cinnamon, cloves, cardamoms and cumin.

(In a separate pan) Half-boil the rice. Mix a little rice with ghee and saffron. Wait for a while. Put (all) the rice under the meat. Pour (the remaining) ghee from above.

Seal the lid of the pan with wheat dough. For five minutes keep on full-blown flame. Move the (sealed) pan (upper) on the flame. Let it be on Dum for 45 minutes.

If the rice has to take the colour of saffron it must be fried.

— Biryani recipe from "Nuskha-i-Shahjahani" manuscript, a 17th century Mughal cookbook written during the reign of Shah Jahan.

Hello. These two texts are earliest known recipe books to mentioned Biryani. Please include them.

• Ain-i-Akbari (16th century text) - This book mentions "Zerd Birinj" (yellow rice). Zerd Birinj can be made into four dishes "sometimes added flesh with other seasonings" but does not give recipes for these other four. There is also reference to "dumpukht".

The great Mughal royal kitchen truly flourished under the Great Jalaluddin Akbar (1542 – 1605). Directly supervised by none other than the Badshah’s confidante and Prime Minister, Abul Fazal; and his chefs (who were hired from different parts of the world) working round the clock, it must have been in the 16th century one of the greatest laboratories of culinary experiments. Abul Fazal, in his Farsi tome Ain-i-Akbari, has left us with succinct descriptions of the royal kitchen along with recipes of the Badshah’s favourite dishes. In that list the first dish is titled zerd birinj, which literally means ‘yellow rice’. Ingredients include: rice, sugar candy, ghee, raisins, almonds, pistachio, salt, ginger, saffron and cinnamon. ‘These,’ informs Abul Fazal, ‘will make four ordinary dishes,’ and then goes on to add, ‘there is also sometimes added flesh with other seasonings.’ Can this be counted as a precursor to our modern biryani? Even with the added ‘flesh’, a very distant relative of biryani it could be, if at all. - However, Ain-i-Akbari does mention one dish, which in centuries to come would evolve into a very special tradition of cooking: dumpukht. Ain-i-Akbari doesn’t give us the cooking procedure, but just the ingredients: meat, oil, onion, pepper, cloves, cardamoms and salt. From other sources we get to know that the Dumpukht method of cooking involves sealing of the handi with wheat flour paste and setting it over slow fire for hours. In dumpukht cooking, there is no opportunity to open the handi to check how far the food had been cooked. It all depends on the experience of the chef.

• Nuskha-i-Shahjahani (17th century) - This text mentions five types of Biryani. 1. Zer Beriyan-i-Paneer (Biryani made with paneer), 2. Zer Beriyan-i-Noor Mahali (Biryani cooked with meat), 3. Zer Beriyan-i-Roomi (Roomi means Roman/Turkish Anatolia), 4. Zer Beriyan-i-Mahi (Fish biryani) and 5. Zer Berian-i-Noor Mahali Nu’ Digar ("Nu'Diger" means 'new variety', this is close to modern version, along with Noor Mahali).

There is documented evidence that a dish, with five distinct varieties, was being cooked in Shah Jahan’s imperial kitchen, which without an iota of doubt was the immediate precursor to today’s biryani. For this we have to turn the pages of an anonymous 17th century manuscript: "Nuskha-i-Shahjahani. This is the text from which Salma Husain has collated the recipes printed in ‘Nuskha-E-Shahjahan: Pulaos from the Royal Kitchen of Shah Jahan’ and many of those in her book ‘The Emperor’s Table’.

This significant text is a treasure trove of delicacies far beyond what Husain offers us. The ‘contents’ section of the text contains a whole chapter titled: Beriyan. The chapter has recipes of five varieties of a dish named Zer beriyan: Zer Beriyan-i-Paneer (gourmands with a natural urge to dismiss ‘vegetable biryani’ as an oxymoron, take careful note), Zer Beriyan-i-Noor Mahali (was this the delectable dish, that has been referred to in our legend? We can never be certain), Zer Beriyan-i-Roomi, Zer Beriyan-i-Mahi (once again, a revelation for many who have dismissed fish Biryani for long as an unwelcome recent interpolation of Bangladeshi chefs) and Zer Berian-i-Noor Mahali Nu’ Digar (this repetition of the Noor Mahali variety—Nu’ Digar meaning ‘new variety’—certainly entices me to conclude that there indeed may be a grain of truth in our legend).

Two of these recipes demand a special attention in the context of our discourse: the Noor Mahali and the Roomi. Make no mistake, although Roomi literally means Roman, in this context it certainly refers to a Turkish dish of a similar vein. Ever since the Byzantine Empire spread across vast areas of Anatolia, later part of the Turkish Empire; persons and things associated with the region has often been called ‘Roomi’. This Zer berian, therefore is ‘Roomi’ exactly in the same sense in which the great Sufi poet Mevlana Jalaluddin Muhammad is also known the world over as Rumi. Beriyan, as we have already seen, refers to a Persian tradition of cooking which involves frying. Therefore, we can safely conclude that the most immediate precursor to the legendary biryani was drawing heavily both from Turkic and Persian traditions, while being evolved to its final shape in royal Indian kitchens.

Besides the Roomi variety, Noor Mahali is the other Zer beriyan that, besides a host of other ingredients, uses our grand trio combination: meat, rice and ghee. It must also be noted that Nuskha-i-Shahjahani doesn’t specify the type of meat, but just mentions gosht, meat. That’s wonderful in one sense: it leaves space for chefs to experiment in keeping with her/ his social, religious and cultural tradition. A look at the Zer Berian-i-Noor Mahali proves how close we had moved towards the modern biryani version."

— Preceding unsigned comment added by 117.198.114.193 (talk • contribs)

References

Meat used in Biryani

List just states lamb, which a young sheep. While that is normally true in Western countries, in the Indian subcontinent countries mutton is also often used, which is an older sheep. This needs including in the list of meats, but the page is currently locked. So could someone able to edit the page add in this info, thanks 2A00:23C6:279B:1D01:40C:8035:7A58:3ED7 (talk) 23:24, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

Biryani origin

It's an Indian dish. That should be mentioned first. 59.96.237.151 (talk) 16:03, 12 May 2024 (UTC)

done! Afv12e (talk) 02:20, 22 May 2024 (UTC)

Biryani emytology

The word biryani can also be derived from the word "Vrinj" in Sanskrit meaning rice. Please add that 2409:40F4:3007:1E13:8000:0:0:0 (talk) 12:06, 8 June 2024 (UTC)

Please provide a source. Lectonar (talk) 14:26, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

Oxford source in etymology

Oxford source does not say Biryani means rice - Oxford source says Biryani means fried;

Origin: Urdu, from Persian biryāni, from biriyān 'fried, grilled'

https://web.archive.org/web/20131014020333/http://oxforddictionaries.com/us/definition/american_english/biryani

Please fix it. 117.200.117.80 (talk) 04:59, 11 July 2024 (UTC)

That is already mentioned under Etymology. Lectonar (talk) 14:25, 11 July 2024 (UTC)