There are many kinds of vegetarian biryani made. Most of them use vegetables & are one pot dishes. Since this paneer biryani is dum cooked, it turns out to be extremely flavorful & delicious. Paneer turns out super flavorful and remains soft as it is dum cooked. Vegetable biryani is one of the most made in my home as it is super quick to make. Sometimes I also add some paneer to the veggie biryani. But the dum paneer biryani shared here is exotic and is great to make for celebrations or on weekends. I make this paneer biryani on occasions when I plan for a special meal. It goes very well with a raita and shorba.

Preparation

  1. Wash rice and soak it for 15 to 20 minutes.
  2. Add oil to a pan and fry onions evenly stirring often.
  3. When they turn brown, set these aside.
  4. This step is optional. If using capsicum or cashews, add them to the same pan and fry just for two to 3 minutes. If using
  5. If using cashews fry to golden. You can fry few paneer chunks till golden if you want to garnish with them like i did.
  6. Soak saffron in little milk. set aside.
  7. Marinate paneer with all the marination ingredients and set aside till the rice cooks.
  8. Add 1 tsp oil & ½ to ¾ tsp salt to 6 cups of water. Bring it to a rolling boil. Add the drained rice and cook till al dente. Meaning the rice grains have to be firm and not mushy but almost cooked.
  9. Drain it off to a colander.

How to make paneer biryani

  1. To a pan add ghee or oil, transfer the paneer marinade to the pan.
  2. Layer the rice and sprinkle fried onions, mint, coriander leaves, kewra or rose water and then saffron milk.
  3. Add the capsicums or cashews. Cover it with a moist cloth or aluminum foil. Cover it with a lid. Place it on a hot tawa and cook for 5 minutes on a high flame and then for 10 minutes on a medium flame. Switch off the flame. Do not open the lid for another 15 minutes.
    Garnish with fried onions, chunks of fried paneer or cashew nuts & mint. Serve paneer biryani with onion raita or cuumber raita

Tips

Fried onions or brown onions are the key to any dum cooked biryani. For authentic flavor deep fry the onions until crisp. I have just pan fried them with very little oil. Use premium quality aged basmati rice as it has a good aroma. The rice grains will be non-sticky & will not turn mushy. Please use good quality paneer that has no corn starch in it. Paneer with additives like corn starch will likely turn hard after cooking. To make your own you can check this link on homemade paneer. Using ghee will make your paneer biryani aromatic and delicious. However you can replace it with oil. You can also use some nuts and raisins for garnishing. I went ahead using some red and green bell peppers as I do not prefer to miss the veggies in our meal. Related Recipes

Recipe card

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