Easy chickpea biryani
Have you ever had a biryani? It’s basically a curry with rice, but it’s all cooked together in the oven so the rice soaks up all of the curry goodness.
I’ve avoided making a biryani in the past because honestly, baking rice has always scared me a bit – eeeek, how much water should you use, and eeeeek, don’t you just end up with strange, crispy, roasted rice? and eeeeek, how does it ever cook properly?
(yes, I can be a bit overdramatic sometimes)
But actually, once I decided to give this chickpea biryani a go, it was really easy. You need to add what looks like far too much water – you’ll wonder how it will end up looking like anything other than a swimming pool with a few pieces of rice floating in it. But once the rice absorbs everything, you’re left with perfectly cooked rice and lovely soft veggies.
The key, I found, was to stir everything pretty often – at least a few times during cooking. That way, it’ll all cook nice and evenly, and you’ll avoid having any undercooked areas of rice.
So stir, stir, stir!
(and then stir a little bit more if you can bring yourself to)
In some Indian restaurants, a biryani is served with a separate dish of curry sauce to pour over the top. I’m not going to lie, this works really well – the biryani itself is slightly on the dry side.
But, since I can usually only bring myself to make one dish at a time, and I didn’t have any jars of sauce on hand to crack open, we had ours on its own, with a dollop of chutney at the side, and it was just loooovely. Obviously mango chutney is the go-to chutney to have alongside Indian food (at least in this country!), but we just had a generic fruit chutney, and it worked really well. So it’s up to you whether to have a separate curry sauce to pour over your chickpea biryani, or whether to be lazy and go for some chutney instead.
Either way, make this chickpea biryani, realise how easy it is, and enjoy!
Easy chickpea biryani
If you’ve cooked this recipe, don’t forget to leave a star rating!
Print Pin CommentIngredients
- 1 red onion
- 200 g cauliflower ~2 cups, cut into bite-size pieces
- 200 g potatoes 2 medium/small potatoes, cut into fairly small dice
- 1 tbsp oil
- Salt
- Black pepper
- 3 tbsp curry paste I used a tikka masala paste
- 750 ml hot vegetable stock ~3 cups
- 100 g green beans ~1 cup, cut into 2 inch chunks
- 350 g basmati rice ~1 3/4 cups
- 400 g tin chickpeas 240g, or ~1 1/4 cups, when drained, drained
- Juice of 1/2 a lemon
- 3 tbsp fresh coriander cilantro, chopped
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 190°C (Gas Mark 5 / 375°F).
- Peel the red onion, and cut it into 1cm wedges. Add it to a large baking dish, along with the cauliflower and potato chunks. Toss the vegetables in a little oil, and season with salt and pepper.
- Roast for about 30 minutes, until the potatoes are fairly soft.
- While the vegetables are roasting, add the curry paste to the hot vegetable stock, and mix well until fully combined.
- When the vegetables are ready, add the green beans, rice, chickpeas and stock to the baking dish, and mix thoroughly. Cover with foil, and return to the oven for about an hour, stirring every fifteen or twenty minutes, until the rice has absorbed the liquid, and the rice and potatoes are totally soft. If the liquid has been absorbed before the rice and potatoes are soft, just add a dash more liquid and return to the oven.
- When everything is fully cooked, stir again, and serve with the lemon juice and fresh coriander.
Nutritional information is approximate, and will depend on your exact ingredients. Please calculate your own nutritional values if you require accuracy for health reasons.
Oh I do love a good biryani, but have never made one myself. I am going to try it now, though I may need a curry sauce on the side.
This just looks soo yummy, I’d like a plate of it right now – please!
I love biryani so my mouth is literally watering and I could eat it right now…off to look in my cupboard as I am sure I have all the ingredients.
These look absolutely delicious. I actually found one of your recipes on Pinterest yesterday (thai green curry soup) and will be making it at some point this week!
Ooh that’s one of my favourites, enjoy it! :)
I’ve never tried a biryani before but this looks amazing. The colours are so bright and vibrant it looks delicious. I too would be scared of baking rice lol!
Jess
Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. I’ve not cooked biryani in ages. I think this might have to go on our meal plan for this week. Do you think it would work well in a slow cooker?
Thanks!
Em
I’ve actually had varying success with cooking rice in the slow cooker, but if you know what you’re doing then you could give it a go! Make sure you let me know whether it worked :)
I am slightly scared of Biriyani’s too but this looks super fab.
Love the sound of this, I’m trying to lose weight so will definitely give the cauliflower rice a go x
Now that is a simple biryani; but it looks absolutely perfect! Pinning for later!
This sounds lovely! Just my sort of meal, although being me, I’d probably cook the chick peas from scratch rather than use a tin. I suppose it’s a bit like making rice pudding, when you need more milk than anybody would think possible, but it gets absorbed in the end!