There is no dish in the world quite like biryani. Not because of what it is, but because of what it means. To the child who grew up smelling it cook from the next room. To the home cook who has spent years trying to crack their grandmother’s recipe. To the chef who has built an entire identity around perfecting it. Biryani is not just food. It is memory, identity, and love, layered and sealed and cooked low and slow until everything inside becomes something greater than the sum of its parts.
We found eight chefs who understand that completely. Their biryanis are as different as the cities that shaped them. What they share is the conviction that there is no shortcut worth taking.
01. Asma Khan — Ammu’s Chicken Biryani (Kolkata, via London)
Chef Asma Khan needs no introduction. The founder of Darjeeling Express in London’s Covent Garden, the first British chef to be featured on her own episode of Netflix’s Chef’s Table, and the author of Ammu, her deeply personal cookbook named after her mother. Her biryani is rooted in Kolkata, in celebration, and in the particular language that food speaks between a mother and a daughter when words fall short.
Her key technique: soak the basmati for a full two hours in heavily salted water before cooking. Do not rush this. The long soak means the rice absorbs water before it hits the boiling pot, dramatically reducing cook time and protecting each grain from turning into starch.
Ingredients (Serves 6)
200g all-purpose flour, 500g good-quality basmati rice, 5 tbsp salt, half tsp saffron strands, 80ml whole milk, 8 tbsp ghee or vegetable oil, 2 white onions thinly sliced, 1kg bone-in chicken thighs (skin removed), 3 garlic cloves crushed, 5-6cm fresh ginger grated, 2 tbsp full-fat Greek yogurt, half tsp chilli powder, 2 green cardamom pods, 2 cloves, half-inch cinnamon stick, half-inch mace crushed, one-eighth tsp grated nutmeg, quarter tsp sugar, juice of half a lemon.
Method
Mix flour with enough water to form a firm dough. Set aside. Wash rice in multiple changes of cold water using gentle circular motions until water runs clear. Soak in salted water for at least 2 hours.
Warm milk to blood temperature and steep saffron in it. Set aside.
Heat ghee in a large, heavy pot over medium-high heat. Fry onions until deeply caramelised. Remove with a slotted spoon, leaving oil in the pan. Remove half the oil and set aside. Brown chicken in remaining oil. Add garlic, ginger, yogurt, chilli powder, and 2 tsp salt. Cook until raw smell disappears and yogurt reduces. Add half the caramelised onions, cover with warm water, bring to boil, then simmer for 25 minutes. The chicken should still be firm, not tender.
Drain rice. Boil a large pot of heavily salted water. Cook rice until three-quarters done, roughly 5 minutes. Drain and spread on a tray immediately.
To assemble: remove chicken from its liquid with a slotted spoon into a heavy-based pot. Strain cooking liquid over chicken. Add whole spices, half the saffron milk, sugar, and lemon. Layer rice over the chicken. Top with remaining caramelised onions, saffron milk, and reserved oil.
Roll dough into tubes and seal around the lid of the pot. Bring to high heat until steam escapes for 1 minute. Then either place on a cast-iron tawa on low heat for 20 minutes, or transfer to oven at 190°C for 10 minutes, then reduce to 150°C for 20 minutes.
Open at the table. Lift gently from one side, merging the wet and dry rice as you serve.
02. Rohit Ghai — Kolkata-Style Lamb Shank Biryani (London)
Michelin-starred Chef Rohit Ghai, the force behind London’s Jamavar, Manthan, Kutir, and the newly opened Vatavaran, serves a Kolkata-style biryani that has become one of the most talked-about dishes on the London fine dining circuit. It arrives sealed under a pastry top. You cut into it at the table, the steam rises, and the lamb shank falls away from the bone the moment you touch it.
Ghai insists the Kolkata biryani is one of the most misunderstood regional styles. It is not spicy. It is not heavy. It is subtle, fragrant, and built on restraint. The clay pot is essential. The saffron is non-negotiable. Baby potatoes, cooked in the mutton stock until they have absorbed every bit of it, are as important as the meat itself.
His advice for home cooks: caramelise your onions with patience and a pinch of salt. It takes time, and it is the foundation of the entire dish. Rush this step and everything that follows will show it.
The biryani is sealed with a dough crust, baked in a clay pot with saffron, fresh plums, and lamb slow-cooked until the meat offers no resistance whatsoever. The pastry top is removed at the table. This is the drama. This is the point.
03. Saransh Goila — Butter Chicken Biryani (Mumbai)
Chef Saransh Goila is the youngest celebrated chef in India, listed in Forbes Celebrity 100 in 2019, the only Indian chef to appear as a guest judge on MasterChef Australia, and the founder of Goila Butter Chicken, now across 100 outlets in 40 cities. His signature biryani takes his famous smoky Makhani gravy and uses it as the base for a dum-cooked biryani, topped with crispy fried onions and crunchy cashews.
The key to Goila’s biryani is the double marination technique. First marinate the chicken in lemon juice, garlic paste, salt, red chilli powder, and ginger paste. Set aside for an hour. Then separately dry-roast cloves, peppercorns, bay leaf, cinnamon, and almonds, grind into a powder, and combine with yogurt, cardamom, turmeric, and cumin. Apply this second marinade and rest for another hour. The layered spicing is what gives his biryani its particular depth.
The Makhani gravy is made in a pressure cooker with cashew nuts, ginger, onions, garlic, coriander powder, honey, kasuri methi, and butter. The biryani is assembled in the traditional dum style, sealed with dough, and cooked on full flame before reducing to low. Thirty minutes of rest before opening is non-negotiable.
04. Courtyard by Marriott Bengaluru Hebbal — Awadhi Mutton Biryani
Few biryanis carry the weight of history the way the Awadhi does. Born in the royal kitchens of Lucknow under the Nawabs, it is a biryani built on patience, restraint, and an almost meditative approach to spice. No heat for its own sake. No colour without purpose. Just fragrance, tenderness, and a depth of flavour that only comes from doing things the slow way.
The version served at Courtyard by Marriott Bengaluru Hebbal arrives in a sealed clay handi, the dough still intact at the edges when it reaches the table. When you break that seal, the steam carries saffron, whole spices, and slow-cooked mutton into the air. It is, without exaggeration, one of the most comforting things you can experience in Bengaluru on a weekend afternoon.
Ingredients (Serves 4)
For the mutton: 800g bone-in mutton, 1 cup yogurt, 2 tbsp ginger-garlic paste, 1 tsp red chilli powder, 1 tsp coriander powder, half tsp turmeric, 1 tsp garam masala, 2 tbsp ghee, salt to taste.
For the rice: 2 cups aged basmati rice, 4 green cardamom pods, 4 cloves, 2 bay leaves, 1 inch cinnamon stick, 1 star anise, salt to taste.
For the dum: a generous pinch of saffron soaked in 3 tbsp warm milk, 3 tbsp ghee, 2 tbsp fried onions (birista), fresh mint leaves, 2 tbsp rose water, dough for sealing.
Method
Marinate the mutton in yogurt, ginger-garlic paste, and all the spices listed. Cover and refrigerate for a minimum of 4 hours, overnight if possible.
In a heavy-bottomed pot, heat ghee and cook the marinated mutton on medium heat until it is about 70 percent done and the oil has separated. Set aside.
Wash and soak basmati for 30 minutes. Bring a large pot of heavily salted water to a boil with all the whole spices. Add the rice and cook until it is exactly 70 percent done. Drain immediately and spread on a flat tray.
To layer: place the cooked mutton at the base of the handi. Layer the partially cooked rice over the mutton. Drizzle saffron milk, ghee, rose water, fried onions, and scattered mint leaves generously between the layers and over the top.
Seal the handi with a tight dough rim. Place over high heat for 5 minutes, then transfer to a cast-iron tawa and cook on the lowest possible flame for 25 to 30 minutes. Allow to rest sealed for another 10 minutes before opening.
Serve with raita, salan, and no distractions.
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05. Praveen Kumar — Dindigul Biryani (Tamil Nadu)
MasterChef India Tamil Season 2 runner-up Praveen Kumar is among the most important voices in the conversation around Tamil Nadu’s distinct biryani traditions. The Dindigul biryani, which originates from the city of Dindigul in the Madurai district, is unlike any other biryani in India. And Praveen Kumar’s recipe is as close to the original as a home kitchen can get.
What makes it distinct is the use of seeraga samba rice, a short-grained, intensely fragrant variety native to Tamil Nadu, instead of basmati. The marination uses freshly ground black pepper in significant quantities, whole spices cooked in sesame oil rather than ghee, and no saffron. The result is drier, spicier, darker, and more intensely aromatic than any of its northern counterparts.
The mutton is traditionally sourced from Dindigul’s local farms, known for leaner, younger animals. Every grain of rice in a Dindigul biryani should be separate. The dish should have chew and spice and fragrance all at once. Praveen Kumar’s version holds to all of these principles without compromise.
06. Subhojit Sen — Safed Biryani (Kolkata)
MasterChef India semifinalist and founder of The Harmony Pot, Subhojit Sen is a former thermal engineer from Kolkata who walked away from a power plant to follow a conviction that food was more important than a career plan. He has since become one of the most interesting culinary voices in the city, and his Safed Biryani, a white biryani with no added colour, no turmeric, and no saffron, has made the city genuinely stop and pay attention.
The Safed Biryani is built on the purity of its ingredients rather than the complexity of its spicing. Subhojit uses yogurt-marinated meat, white pepper, green cardamom, and restrained aromatics to create a biryani that is creamy, pale, and deeply fragrant without any of the visual cues that usually signal a biryani’s depth of flavour. The visual surprise is part of the experience. A white biryani that smells this good and tastes this deep is the kind of dish that makes you reconsider every assumption you held about the category.
His rule: subtlety is the highest form of skill. Any cook can add more spice. The real art is knowing how little you need.
07. Takamasa Osawa — Biryani with a Japanese Soul (Tokyo, via Tamil Nadu)
The most unexpected entry on this list is also, arguably, the most extraordinary. Takamasa Osawa is a 36-year-old Japanese chef who owns a 10-seater restaurant in Tokyo that serves only biryani. It has a Michelin Bib Gourmand. He does not speak Hindi, Tamil, or Urdu. He learned entirely through smell, taste, touch, and sight, in local restaurants, canteens, and roadside shacks across India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh over 15 years of obsessive back-and-forth travel.
His version of biryani is faithful to the techniques he absorbed across the subcontinent but filtered through a Japanese sensibility for restraint, clean flavour, and precision. Shiitake mushrooms replace some proteins where appropriate, finished with a dash of soy sauce for umami. His kachumber gets a wasabi twist. The rice is washed and handled with the same care a sushi chef applies to the rice that will hold a piece of fish.
He prefers mutton, always. He says biryani is about umami and fragrance, and that a Japanese kitchen can honour those principles as fully as any kitchen on the subcontinent, provided the cook is willing to do the work. The work, in his case, took fifteen years.
08. Rohit Ghai’s Bonus — Hyderabadi Kachay Gosht Ki Biryani
Before we close, a word on the style Ghai describes as the most special and most unique biryani in India: the Hyderabadi Kachay Gosht, meaning raw meat biryani. Raw, marinated mutton layered with raw, soaked rice in a sealed pot, both cooking simultaneously in the dum, the steam and moisture from the meat cooking the rice, the spices flavouring both without any pre-cooking. The technique requires precision about moisture levels and heat that takes years to develop. But when it works, it is unlike anything else.
Ghai’s instructions for the home version: marinate the mutton overnight in yogurt, fried onions, ginger-garlic paste, red chilli powder, and whole spices. Layer with soaked seeraga samba or basmati rice, seal the pot tightly, and cook on a tawa over very low heat for 45 to 55 minutes without lifting the lid once. The temptation to check is the biggest mistake a home cook can make. Trust the seal. Trust the steam. Trust the process.
Eight biryanis. Eight stories. One conclusion: there is no single correct biryani. There is only the biryani that carries your history in it, made with the patience it deserves.
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