Prawns Biryani - a wonderful addition to your prawn recipes

Biryani is my favourite, an any time comfort food. It is chicken biryani that I make often and prawns biryani comes a real close. With a packet of frozen prawns in the freezer, I decided to make the prawns biryani, it is one good addition to my repertoire of prawn recipes. Aquick one pot meal that inspite of the seemingly long list of ingredients is one of the easy to make prawn recipes.Prawn recipes are one my daughter loves and she loved having this prawn biryani for dinner too..on demand, so it was a very satisfying experience for both me the mama and cook:)
Ingredients and how to make prawn biryani:

For the rice:
Rice – 1 cup basmati rice (approx 200 gms)
Whole garam masala/spices(2 to 3 cloves, 1 black elaichi, 2 green cardamoms, 1” piece cinnamon, 1 bay leaf, 1 star anise)
Water – ½ cup
Butter – 1 tbsp
Method for making rice for prawns biriyani:
Take 1 tsp of butter in a pressure cooker. Heat and add the whole spices and sauté for half a minute. Add the raw rice and fry for 2 to 3 minutes. Add 1.5 cups of water and cook in the pressure cooker(with weight) for 10minutes. Switch off gas and open after 15 minutes. Fluff up the rice with a fork and keep aside.

For the prawns:
250 gms prawns
Oil- 2 tbsp
Onion- 2 (chopped fine)
Tomato – 2 small (chopped fine)
¼ tsp turmeric powder
¼ tsp whole jeera
1 tsp ginger paste
1 tsp garlic paste
Chopped coriander - 2 tbsp
1 green chilli slit into 2
Chilli powder ½ tsp
½ tsp pepper powder
2 tsp chicken masala powder eastern
½ tsp garam masala powder
Method for making the prawn masala for the prawns biriyani:
Take a pan and add 2 tbsp of oil. Add the whole jeera, let it splutter. Now add the ginger and garlic paste(use freshly made paste) and sauté. Add the chopped onion and sauté till the onions are soft and change colour to golden brown. Now add in the tomato, green chilli,turmeric powder and sauté till the tomatoes are soft and slowly start disintegrating. Add in the red chilli powder(you can reduce the quantity if you do not wish to have it too spicy as the chicken masala too has chilli powder in it), pepper powder and the Eastern Chicken masala powder and sauté till it is well blended and the oil starts oozing out from the sides of the masala mixture. Cover and cook for 5 to 7 minutes. Open and mix in the garam masala powder and the chopped coriander leaves.

Take a deep borosil/pyrex dish(oven-proof dish), now add the remaining butter(you may add an extra tsp of butter as it really adds to the taste, however, if you want to cut the calories cut the butter and simply grease the dish with ½ a tsp of oil). Add a layer of rice and then a layer of the prawn/shrimp masala. Repeat with rice and prawn layer. Top with some more chopped coriander leaves. Cover with an aluminium foil and bake for 7 to 10 minutes at 180 deg C in a preheated oven. Take out. Let stand for 10 minutes. Open and serve hot with a raita of your choice. This raita goes well with the prawn biriyani.

Other Prawn Recipes you may like:

1- Mom's yummy brown Kerala style prawn curry

2- Garlic Butter Prawns

3- Kerala style prawn fry