Many children and teenagers are very poor and fussy about eating vegetables. One way to get them to enjoy vegetables would be by putting all sorts of vegetables in a biryani.
Vegetable biryani is very flavourful and it has a wonderful aroma. You can eat it by itself or just make some raita to go along with it. The spices are all in your kitchen, so you don’t need to get anything special for it.
There are days that we are on a vegetarian diet and we do not know what to cook. So it would be a great idea to cook this biryani. This biryani is a one-pot meal. It is very simple and easy. You can make it in less than 45 minutes!
This recipe serves 4 portions
Ingredients
- 1 bayleaf
- 2 cinnamon sticks, cardamoms and cloves
- 1 teaspoon garlic (grated)
- 1 teaspoon ginger (grated)
- 1 small onion (chopped)
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 tablespoon coriander powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin powder
- 1 teaspoon garam masala
- 1 tomato (chopped)
- 2 tablespoons coriander leaves (chopped)
- 1 small potato (diced into small cubes)
- 2 tablespoons carrot (diced into small cubes)
- 8 french beans (cut into 1 cm in length)
- 12 cauliflower florets (cut into 2 cm in size)
- 1 ½ cups basmati rice (soaked for 30 minutes)
- 2 ¾ cups water
- 2 teaspoons salt
- 4 tablespoons oil
Method
- Take a pan and heat it on medium heat. Pour 2 tablespoons of oil and add bay leaf, cinnamon, cardamom and clove. Saute for 15 seconds.
- Now add grated garlic, grated ginger and chopped onion. Saute for 30 seconds till the onion goes lightly pink and translucent. Add diced potato and carrots. Cook for 3 minutes until the carrots and potatoes are half done.
- Now add cauliflower and french beans and followed by all the spices and the chopped tomato. Add 2 to 3 tablespoons of water if you find it difficult to cook them. Cook for another 3 to 4 minutes.
- Lastly add ½ teaspoon salt and chopped coriander. Mix well. Switch off the fire.
- Now take a rice cooker, add all the vegetables that have been cooked. Add 1 ½ cups of rice that have been soaked into the rice cooker, followed by water and 1 ½ teaspoon of salt. Finally, add 2 tablespoons of oil.
- Now press the rice cooking button and let the rice cook. Once the keep warm button is on, do not serve immediately, let the biryani settle for 10 to 15 minutes. You may serve after that.
- When serving the vegetable biryani, you can accompany it with a raita. Happy Cooking!
Final thoughts
Here are some options that you may choose to follow to get a successful biryani.
- If you do not have cauliflower, you can substitute it with broccoli. You may also add 3 button mushrooms that have been sliced.
- You may also add some fried onions, fried cashew nuts and fried raisins on top of your biryani before serving.
- Do try making this simple and yet amazing vegetable biryani.
Lina Binwani is a content writer under Headliner by Newswav, a programme where content creators get to tell their unique stories through articles and at the same time monetize their content within the Newswav app.
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