♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - Today at Milk Street, we travel to Lahore, Pakistan, for two really fabulous recipes.

One is chicken biryani.

We figure out how to do the whole thing in one pot, but still keeping those distinct layers of flavor.

And then chicken karahi.

This is named after a wok-like pan they actually cook this dish in.

It's great and it's relatively easy to do.

It has chilies, it has tomatoes, it has yogurt.

Absolutely great dish.

So please stay tuned as we travel to Lahore, Pakistan.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

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♪ ♪ - Walking the streets of Lahore, Pakistan, can be intense-- food and the flames used to cook it quite literally spilling out around you.

It's the perfect way to learn the fundamentals of Pakistani cuisine.

♪ ♪ - Pakistani cooking is very diverse.

While Indian food is more towards spices, in Pakistani cuisine, the flavor gets developed by versatile usage of cooking techniques.

- Those intense flavors were profound in the very first dish I tried, chicken karahi.

- Chicken karahi requires searing, braising, cooking, steaming, stir frying, all incorporated in the one particular dish.

Karahi is basically a curry in which the meat is cooked in an iron wok.

With the, you know, tomatoes, onions, and yogurt with salt, pepper, and the garam masala, the Pakistani spice blend.

We started finishing the dish with the all green masalas-- that is fresh greens, chilies and the coriander and the ginger julienne.

And also adding garam masala towards the end also and finishing off with the butter and the cream.

- But the next dish I learned revealed a whole new layer to Pakistani cooking.

♪ ♪ South Asia has innumerable variations of what many consider Pakistan's national dish, chicken biryani.

So I wonder what set it apart here in Lahore.

♪ ♪ The first clue came when Muneeze Khalid and Shahnaz Kausar hauled out over 30 ingredients for their biryani.

- We're going to do the bhunai.

The bhunai is cooking while stirring.

Once the color changes, then we add some water on top along with the yogurt.

♪ ♪ - This is very much not dump and stir cooking.

Muneeze explained that every ingredient is added and cooked in its own time, creating layers of flavors and textures that ensure each grain of rice is perfectly cooked and seasoned.

Back out on the streets of Lahore, I learned about a simpler one-pot version, matka biryani, that sacrificed none of the layers or flavor.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ - So biryani, I think maybe I made it once in the '70s, when I thought cooking for eight hours was a fun thing to do.

Which I still do occasionally, because you have all these different components.

They had to be prepared kind of separately.

- Yes.

- Put together, finish cooking.

So explain this to me.

I mean, sell me on this dish.

- Well, all right.

It doesn't have to be as complicated as you thought it was in the '70s, let's put it that way.

There are actually two classic styles of biryani.

One is just the traditional biryani, which is a little bit of a project piece, as you say.

The other type is a more rustic type called matka biryani.

And I learned this version from a street vendor.

And this is where they literally take all the ingredients, pop them into a clay pot... - Mm!

- ...put the pot on some charcoals, and walk away.

And it's delicious.

- You just sold me on biryani, that sounds great.

- (laughs) So we learned both versions when I was in Lahore, and we came away with, you know, positives from both styles, and our version kind of blends the best of both worlds.

- So I'm gonna get started.

- Please do.

- With oil, some ghee-- by the way, you don't have to wait till this gets hot to add the onions.

You can add the onions cold, is what I'm gonna do.

- But you don't get the satisfying sizzle.

- (imitates sizzling) - All right, so what you're doing is you're cooking down your onions with some ghee.

And that's actually the classic start for many Pakistani dishes, is ghee and onions cooked down until nice and jammy.

So we have rice and, you know, in the classic biryani style, it's par-cooked.

And we found, however, we didn't need to go to that trouble.

We actually got better results just by soaking the rice for about 30 minutes with a little bit of salt and just enough water to cover it by about an inch, go for 30 minutes, and then drain it and rinse it.

And this plumps the grains a little bit more evenly than if you just put them in dry.

So you're gonna get a fluffier finished rice.

So I'm going to jump way ahead in the recipe, because we're gonna use this toward the end when we're assembling everything and I'm gonna put some saffron in some warm water and let that infuse.

In Pakistan, this is kind of a finishing dollop, when you've assembled all the layers of the biryani.

And you drizzle this on.

Now, the interesting thing I found about biryani, all biryanis, and there are countless iterations of biryani across both Pakistan and India.

The interesting thing to me, though, is that they all have one thing in common, and it's all about layering, layering textures and layering flavors.

So what you'll find is often the same ingredients are used multiple times during the cooking process, because you're going to get different flavors depending on whether a spice is, say, bloomed in fat versus added when there's a lot of liquid.

Also different forms of the same ingredient.

So you might have whole cumin seeds and then ground cumin.

And then you might also have something like garam masala, which includes cumin.

- Hmm.

- So you might have three instances of cumin alone.

But then it's also layering of textures.

So a proper biryani is assembled, let's say, rather than just cooked.

You know, a lot of people wonder, like, the difference between, say, a biryani and a pilaf.

And a pilaf is very similar, oftentimes can have identical ingredients.

But as the cooks in Lahore explained to me, a pilaf is more of a dump and stir and simmer thing.

And it can have a more porridge-y consistency.

But a biryani is supposed to be very distinct in terms of its layers and textures.

And so you assemble it and you don't stir it while it cooks.

- Very structured.

- Yes.

- You know, it is interesting, one of the things I've learned in the last ten years is about, as you said, using whole spices... - Mm.

- ...blooming them in oil, or actually toasting them in a pan.

- Yup.

- And then grinding them yourself in a mortar and pestle.

And then you have ground spices, and those can also be bloomed in oil.

And you do get different flavors.

And the difference, I have to say, if you take cardamom, for example, or coriander or cumin and toast it, it's light years beyond... - Yeah.

- ...just taking some ground cumin from a supermarket.

- Well, there's a place and a time for just ground cumin from the bottle.

But, like I say, you know, you get a different flavor from the same ingredient if you toast it.

- Okay, we'll be here just a few minutes getting this cooked down, and then we'll move on to building our biryani.

Caramelized.

- There we go.

- At least mostly caramelized.

- So we're gonna pull those out, and the reason we're doing that, as you said, is because it's not about dumping and simmering.

It's about layering.

- So we have ginger.

We have garlic, we have whole cumin seed, and we have two bay leaves.

and we'll just bloom those for a couple minutes.

- Now, the combination of ground ginger and ground garlic is so common and used as such a base to everything in Pakistan that actually most home cooks keep a jar of the puree of the two of them in their refrigerator.

- Hm.

- They use a ton of it, it's wonderful.

- Mm!

This is the original aromatherapy.

Now we have more spices.

- More spices.

- We have clove, turmeric.

- Mm-hmm.

- We have cardamom, we have garam masala.

- And black pepper.

You're gonna put in salt as well.

And this is, again, where we're getting back into our layering, because a lot of those spices that you just added were also in the garam masala.

And some Kashmiri chili powder, wonderful stuff.

All right, so then you have some tomato puree.

(puree sizzles) See, now you're getting some sizzle-- and some potatoes.

And again, we're trying to balance here.

So we've got some dried apricot and, of course, chicken thighs.

- You know, you should come over to my house when I cook, I like someone to hand me things.

You know, it's like you just, like, I don't have to prep it.

- (laughs) - You know, it's great.

- And a half-cup of water to loosen things up.

- We do have to admit, I think, there are 21 ingredients, I counted them, in this recipe.

- Of course you did.

- But, you know, one thing, just a caution, when you look at a recipe and it has a long ingredient list, if half of those ingredients are spices... - Yeah.

- ...it's not about the number of ingredients, it's the how many steps you have to go through... - Right.

- ...or different kinds of things you have to do.

- Well, and again, despite me saying earlier, this is not a dump and simmer recipe, a lot of the ingredients are actually just dumped in.

I mean, you're not prepping a lot of it.

So you can just kind of dump it in and walk away.

- Okay, we're gonna cook this for 15 minutes or so until the potatoes are cooked through.

- Yes.

Ready to layer?

- Yeah.

- All right.

This, by the way, is your last opportunity to really stir, so get it in while you can.

But you can stir in half of the onions.

Stir those in, and then get it off the heat, because we're gonna stir in some yogurt, and I'm gonna throw in about two tablespoons of mint while you do that.

- This looks good.

- Now spread that into a nice, even layer, and you are no longer allowed to stir.

- Okay.

- Okay.

Half the rice goes on top.

All right, now spread that as evenly as you can without disrupting the layer.

All right, now we're gonna put the rest of the onions on top as well as a little bit more mint.

Then we're gonna put on the rest of the rice.

You're gonna drizzle on a little bit more ghee, I'm gonna put a little bit more mint on there, there we go.

And then to perfume the rice as it cooks, some lemon slices, some tomato slices, and those are gonna get nice and tender as the whole thing cooks together.

Now, I should add that traditionally, biryani is done on the stovetop, but we start it on the stovetop and finish it in the oven, because it gives us a more even heat that cooks everything together much more evenly.

And then we're gonna do our saffron water right around the edge, there you go.

Bring it up to a simmer and pop it in the oven.

- Am I... am I done?

- You did okay, you did okay.

We'll see how the layers hold up.

- Okay, it's up to a simmer.

- Get it in the oven, about 25, 30 minutes.

♪ ♪ - So it's been ten minutes out of the oven.

Put the towel on top to make sure no moisture gets back into the biryani.

- Do not want a mushy biryani.

And now... now... - I can mess with it.

- ...you can stir it now, and it's up to you whether you stir the lemon slices in.

You can remove them, totally up to you.

- Leave them in.

- Leave them in.

Now, the idea here is fold and fluff.

I'm gonna throw a little bit more mint in there just for good measure.

- This does look good.

- There we go-- and to serve it, we have some yogurt, of course, and some chilies.

- Oh.

- Mm.

- Wow!

- Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

- Really good.

- Tons of flavor, tons of distinct flavors.

And I think that's what's really important.

Distinct flavors, distinct textures.

- This has, which I love all the time, is depth of flavor.

- Mm-hmm.

- But you still can taste the different flavors.

- Mm.

- It's not, you know, it's not all combined.

- And I'm gonna say, it was a good idea to leave the lemons in; the flesh of the lemon broke down into the dish and really gives it a nice pop.

- So how does this compare to the two versions you had?

One, things are cooked separately and put into the pot, and one that was just thrown together?

- Well, one, this is a little bit easier.

And two, you get more distinct flavors here than you do in the fully matka version, because we did prep it a little bit separately and then assemble it.

And just combining it all together like this, you just get that perfect, perfect texture on the rice.

- So, a Pakistani-style chicken biryani-- great depth of flavor; you can still taste all the separate ingredients that go into it.

And despite the long ingredient list, actually, it's not that difficult to make.

- Nah.

- A great make-ahead dish for a Saturday night.

- Absolutely, yeah.

- Great job, this is good.

♪ ♪ - You just saw a beautiful one-pot complete rice meal, and now we thought we'd step back and give you some rice basics, since most often we eat it as a side dish.

And despite the fact that it's one of the world's most widely eaten grains, there seems to be a lot of confusion around it.

So here are our rice rules.

Rule number one, there are no rules.

There are so many types of rice and ways to cook rice, but we're going to get you sorted, don't worry.

In fact, we asked you for your most pressing questions and here are your top three.

Question number one, do I need to soak and rinse my rice?

For most side dishes, we found that you don't need to soak your rice, but you do want to rinse it to get the starches off, so you get beautiful, fluffy rice grains.

That said, you just saw us soak our rice to make the biryani.

There are circumstances where you will soak it, but the recipe will definitely tell you that.

In general, for a side dish, rinse, don't soak.

Number two, how do I cook my rice?

First and foremost, embrace the rice cooker.

These are amazing.

The second piece of equipment is a favorite with Chris.

It's the Japanese donabe.

This makes very, very fluffy rice.

They're very simple to use.

You add the rice and water, you turn it on.

Once there's a steady stream of steam coming out of the little vent here, turn it off, finish your prep, get dinner on the table, and voila, the fluffiest rice.

Look how it's standing up.

This, however, a pot is what most people use, and this is a great way to cook rice.

Depending on the type of rice, if it's long grain or short grain, if it's brown rice, you'll have different liquid-to-rice measurements.

But this is a wonderful way to get dinner on the table.

Number three, how do I jazz up my basic rice side dish?

Here are two super simple ways.

Number one, and this is my favorite, is into the rice, before it starts cooking, throw in some whole spices.

We have cinnamon and cardamom here.

I love a star anise or even a whole dried chili.

Then, as the rice cooks and steams, the spices infuse the rice with a really subtle spice flavor.

It's a beautiful and elegant way to jazz up that basic side dish.

The second, and for a bolder flavor, is to take a pesto or an herb paste.

And once the rice is cooked, to stir that in, and then you can get a bright-green-hued side dish that is less of a side dish and more of a main course.

So there are basic rice rules, made to break, but you can apply one immediately.

Next, you're gonna learn how to make Pakistani chicken karahi, and we suggest you serve it with rice.

To make the chicken dish, you use garam masala.

Key to garam masala is cinnamon, cumin, and cardamom.

Why don't you try spicing your side dish with some of the spices that will also be in your chicken dish and see what a transformation it can be.

♪ ♪ - Now, this dish is called a karahi.

We're making chicken karahi.

It's a curry-style dish, and it's named for the style of vessel that its cooked in.

It's a pan very similar to a wok with a shallow bowl-like surface.

Now, we adapted our chicken karahi for a skillet.

That allows two things to happen.

There's more surface area, so the evaporation of the sauce is quicker, which concentrates it quicker, and it allows the whole dish to cook a little bit quicker too, which we liked.

We want to streamline the cooking time.

We're going to start our dish with ghee.

Ghee is endemic to this style of cooking.

It's a clarified butter, which simply means the milk solids have been removed.

If you don't have ghee, you can use a combination of regular butter and oil, and that gives you pretty much the same effect.

So we've got a generous amount of ghee in the skillet.

We'll let that get melted, get the skillet nice and hot, and then we will add the chicken first to brown.

Now, the reason we are browning the chicken first, which is a little off the traditional path, is because we like the flavor that the caramelized chicken gives to the whole dish.

Some of it sticks to the pan, that's totally normal.

All that dark, crunchy fond will add flavor to the whole thing.

Gonna spread this out into a single layer and then just leave it be for a little while.

Let it get really deeply brown.

We're only browning one side, so just let it sit and do its thing.

Okay, good.

So this will take about two to three minutes to get brown.

And while that's happening, we can work with our tomatoes.

Now, when it comes to tomatoes, you obviously have a lot of choices.

You can use canned tomatoes, you can use fresh tomatoes, you can use tomato paste.

We tried canned tomatoes, because the convenience can't be beat, right?

And they're consistent in flavor.

But we noticed a difference.

We really loved the freshness that fresh tomatoes bring to the whole thing.

We do use a little tomato paste as well for depth of flavor, and it helps to thicken the sauce.

Now, instead of cutting them up into little pieces, we found it's much more efficient to grate them on a large whole grater.

So the best way to grate a whole tomato without grating part of your fingers as well.

Cut them in half so you have a nice flat surface.

And then hold it onto the grater, cut side down, and flatten your hand-- that's key.

And just go up and down.

You can use your thumb on the top a little bit to get started.

And we're just gonna grate it right down to the skin.

There you go, and you're left with the skin.

We're using six plum tomatoes total.

But, you know, plum tomatoes differ in size.

They'll go by weight more than you do number of tomatoes.

Now, for any good curry, spice is going to be the center of the flavor.

We're using a combination of cumin and coriander, and then we're adding garam masala to that.

Garam masala is a blend of many spices already, so we're just taking this fabulous shortcut.

And we're going to use some fresh garlic, fresh ginger, because those you have to have in this kind of dish.

And like I said earlier, a little bit of tomato paste, too, to enrichen the sauce.

Okay, this is looking great, you can see the chicken is not fully cooked yet, which is fine.

We're going to finish cooking it in the sauce later.

We just want to get the browning underneath.

You can see the nice golden, crusty brown.

Okay, now, I'm using a slotted spoon to remove this because I wanna leave all that delicious fat in the pan.

Now we've got butter with chicken goodness mixed into it.

We'll add the chilies to the pan first.

These are green serrano chilies.

You can use jalapenos if you want.

They have been de-seeded and stemmed, of course, and then chopped into small pieces.

Now, chili heat is one of those things that you can personalize to your taste.

Funny, I used to consider myself a spice wimp, meaning when it comes to heat and chili, I felt like my mouth was on fire.

But like with anything, right, the more I ate it, the more I came to appreciate what that little bit of fiery spice brings to a dish.

It sort of heightens all the flavors.

It gets your senses going strong, and it really brings a lot.

So we've got the chilies just softened just a little bit.

We will add all the spices that we just talked about, the garam masala, the cumin, and the coriander.

By adding the spices to the fat like this, before anything else goes in other than the chilies, you're letting the spices bloom.

Oh, my gosh, I can already smell them.

Then we will add the grated ginger and garlic.

Now we'll put in the tomato paste.

We're gonna give the tomato paste a little more time to deepen and brown in the skillet.

Then we'll mix it in with everything.

We're going to add the tomatoes and the juices from the tomatoes; that liquid will help loosen the brown from the bottom of the skillet.

Sort of like deglazing, actually.

We'll mix them in with all the delicious spices, and we will add some salt and pepper at this point.

Note that there's a lot more pepper than there is salt.

Freshly ground black pepper is really one of the flavor spices within this dish.

Black pepper is a spice as well, and I think people forget that sometimes.

Okay, now we have one more ingredient to add, and this, again, really is a matter of choice.

We're going to add a very small amount of sugar.

Sugar can be surprising in savory dishes.

It doesn't necessarily bring a sweetness to the dish that's notable, but what it does is it helps round out sharp flavors.

And another benefit of adding a little bit of sugar to dishes that have fresh tomatoes in them is the sugar helps to bring out the natural sweetness of the tomatoes.

All right, this is bubbling away nicely.

We wanna keep it at a low simmer for about five or six minutes.

This allows the extra liquids to evaporate a little bit and the flavor to concentrate.

Phew, this is happening.

Okay, very, very thick.

You can see that it's concentrated.

Look at that, it holds a streak.

And one of the keys that you know the concentration is ready is when everything sort of heavy goes to the bottom and the fat rises to the top.

And now it's time to add the chicken.

This is going right back in.

All the juices that were on the plate go in as well.

So now we just need to let this simmer together.

Reduce this a little bit more, the chicken cooks thoroughly.

And to help speed up the process, because we are about streamlining this cooking process here, we're going to cover this partially, not all the way.

You still want to have some venue for steam to escape.

♪ ♪ Okay, our fast-cooking boneless chicken thighs are ready.

Here we are.

Oh, beautiful, the sauce is really thick.

The fat is still simmering away there.

Now, though, that ghee has absorbed all the flavors of the fat as well.

And as we know, fat carries flavor, so your sauce here is extremely flavorful.

One last little thing to do, and that is stir in a little bit of yogurt.

Now, not every Pakistani cook uses yogurt for their chicken karahi, but we learned from one who did, and we loved the effect of it.

Now turn the heat off.

Don't want to overcook the yogurt there.

You can serve this with rice.

Basmati rice is great, but any rice you have, serve it with naan, serve it with both, which is our preference, actually.

Now garnishes, right?

You know, at Milk Street, we love to layer flavors.

We have intensely rich flavors from the cooking process.

And now we're going to add some bright herbal flavor with a little bit of fresh mint sprinkled on top.

We also have some of the same chilies that were in the stew, fresh though.

And we'll sprinkle those on top.

A little bit of heat, a little bit of crunch.

It's really nice texturally.

And, of course, a little squeeze of lemon for that bright punch of acidic flavor.

Now, if you were here, I'd love nothing more than to share this with you, but as it is, I'll have to taste it and tell you how delicious it is.

Mm.

Ooh!

Got that little bit of spicy heat in there.

Just love it.

This dish is flavorful.

Got the tangy edge of the lemon and the ginger.

You have the incredible depth from those spices and from the tomatoes cooking down in this sauce.

It just all melds together and it's great for a weeknight because you can see how quickly it cooked.

This is our Pakistani chicken karahi.

You can get this recipe and all the recipes from this season of Milk Street at MilkStreetTV.com.

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Order your copy of the Milk Street Cookbook for $27, 40% less than the cover price.

Call 855-MILK-177 or order online.

- Funding for this series was provided by the following: - MOWI salmon comes ready to cook, ready to grill, ready to season, or pre-seasoned and ready to eat.

In an assortment of flavors for an assortment of people.

MOWI Salmon.

- We pass down traditions here.

We create and connect.

We enjoy special moments-- some simple, some grand.

The heart of your home is the kitchen.

The heart of your kitchen is The Galley.

♪ ♪ ♪ ♪