Herbal Chicken Biriyani/Green Chicken Briyani/Mooligai Kozhi Biriyani

My kids are meat lovers, though i love vegetarian foods, i had an obligation to cook meaty foods atleast a meal per day. Though i cook meat dishes often, i post them very rarely in my space. If you check non vegetarian dishes in my space you will find them lesser than the vegetarian dishes. Dunno why i think twice to post meat friendly dishes here. Since its sunday today, i felt like posting this flavorsome green chicken biriyani aka Herbal chicken biriyani i cooked recently for our lunch as sunday special. This chicken biriyani tastes absolutely fabulous with eye pleasing green colour. Though this dish is also named as Nilgiri Biriyani, i felt like naming this dish as Herbal chicken biriyani as this dish calls handful of mint and coriander leaves with couple of spices. Yes this dish is completely cooked in a special mint & coriander leaves paste grounded along with whole garam masala, green chillies. This briyani is tomato-free dish, only onions is used in this dish with ginger garlic paste. I used yogurt to prepare this biriyani, if you want to make them more flavourful, just replace the yogurt with freshly squeezed coconut milk.

This biriyani is quite an easy dish to prepare if you are using pressure cooker. Even with a busy morning routines, you can prepare this aromatic briyani quickly if you plan everything earlier. Yes overnight marination of your chicken helps a lot to dish out this briyani with less efforts in the morning to pack in anyone's lunch box. Apart from the marination, you doesnt anything than chopping onions and grinding the spices along with the herbs. This aromatic, gluten free one pot meal will definitely please the tastebuds of your chicken loving kids. Since i used pressure cooker for preparing this dish, its took me hardly less than 20 minutes to get ready. I have been running a month of blogging marathon for the past three weeks with different themes. And this week's theme is Kid's lunchbox recipes, obviously this Herbal chicken biriyani goes for this week's theme.

Do check what i have posted for the past 6 days under 'Kid's Lunch Box Recipes':

Week 4 - Kid's Lunchbox

Protein Tomato Biriyani
Potato Minced Meat Paratha Pockets
Vegan Eggplants & Sunflower Seeds Powder Rice
Eggless Multigrain Tomato Pesto & Cheese Rolls
Egg Tomato Pulao
Carrot Paneer Rice

1/2kg  Chicken (cut as medium sized pieces)
2cups Basmati rice
2nos Onion ( chopped lengthwise thinly)
1tsp Ginger garlic paste
1cup Yogurt
2cups Water
Salt
Oil
2nos Bayleaves
3nos Cardamoms
1 Cinnamon stick
4 Cloves

For Marination:
1/4cup Yogurt
salt
1/4tsp Turmeric powder

To Grind;
1cup Mint leaves
1cup Coriander leaves
4-5nos Green chillies
2tbsp Lemon juice
1 Cinnamon stick
1 Cardamoms
2 Cloves

Marinated the chicken with salt, yogurt and turmeric powder, arrange in fridge and let sit for overnite.

Grind all the ingredients given under the 'list to grind' as fine paste.

Wash and soak the basmati rice with enough water for half an hour.

Heat enough oil in a pressure cooker, add the Bay leaves, cloves, cardamoms, cinnamon stick and fry until they turns brown.

Add the sliced onions and sauté until the onions turns brown.Add the ginger garlic paste and saute until the raw smell goes away.

Now add the marinated chicken pieces and sauté until the chicken pieces gets half cooked, add salt to taste.

Add the grounded paste, yogurt and cook for a while.

Now add the water to the chicken pieces, bring it to boil. Once the water starts boiling well, add the soaked rice and cook in high flame.

Once its starts boiling well, close the cooker with a lid and cook upto 3 hisses. Put off the stove.

Dont disturb the biriyani for a while. Finally squeeze the lemon juice.

Fluff the rice gently without breaking the rice.

Serve with raita.

Check out the Blogging Marathon page for the other Blogging Marathoners doing BM# 87

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