Lentil Biryani / Masoor Biryani

Who don't like one pot meals? I love it and make it and enjoyed it too. I love different kinds of biryani too but my husband is not a white rice fan and with brown rice don't get that satisfaction so one day I was alone for diner and I used that chance to make a biryani. Its easy and tasty too. Instead of lentil you can use fresh peas too. Add any nuts if you like it. I make it simple and flavorful but go ahead and add your family's favorite ingredients in it. You need to do some preparation before making it so will give you recipe that way only.

Ingredients :

For rice :

1 cup raw basmati  rice (will yield two cups cook one)
1 green cardamom
salt to taste
water to cook

Heat a big pot with water in it, when its boil add rice and cardamom and salt and cook its become fully cooked. Drain it and keep it aside, you need cold rice for this so make this at least hour or two ago. Always add cardamom while making rice, it will give nice fragrance to rice.

Fry Potatoes :

2 potatoes
oil to fry

Make big cubes of potatoes and fry it till its golden brown and keep it aside.

Lentils :

1 cup lentils ( whole masoor )
water

Cook lentils in water till its soft. I did it in pan only, but if you are sure that in pressure cooker its not going to be mushy and stay whole. then use cooker.

Fry onions:

1 big white onion
2 tbsp. oil

Chopped onion in long slices and fry it till it becomes nice brown. keep it aside.

Masala for biryani :

1  sliced onion
1 tbsp. each of finely chopped ginger and garlic
3  green chilies big slices
1 tomato chopped or 1 tbsp. puree
1/4 cup yogurt
3/4 tbsp. biryani masala
1 tsp. Red chili powder
1 tsp. cumin seeds
2 cloves
few strings of mint
1 black cardamom
salt as per taste
3 tbsp. oil

Method :

Heat a big pan. Add oil in it. Add whole spices and  cumin seeds and cook for a minute. Add onion and cook till its pink.
Add ginger , garlic, green chilies and tomato. Cook for a minute.
Add fried potatoes , yogurt, biryani masala, red chili powder,  salt.
Add lentils in it and cover and cook for a 2-3 minutes till it becomes little dry.
Now this time you can decide if you want to mix it everything , you can add rice , fry onions, mint and mix it and cover and let it cook on low flame for 5-7 minutes.

But if you want to layered it, take half of the lentils mixture out.
then layered half of the rice, half of fry onions, mint leaves. Then again lentil layer, rice, onions, mint.
If you want fancy add saffron -milk mixture too.

Serve hot with raita, papad. Save some fried onion to put it on top. I can eat whole bowl of fried onion as it is.

I had it with tomato raita, sago papad (microwave not fried), Pickled onion and garlic chutney.

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