On 16/6/2006 12:14pm, Mamta posted:

Hello Farzana

Cooking rice in a large pot is not that different from cooking it in a smaller pot. I used to have 50-60 people regularly for dinner parties, when I was young ;-)! The pot should be high, as opposed to wide. The reason is that gas burners are narrower than the old fashioned coal ‘angithi’. If you use a wide pot, heat doesn’t cook the rice at the periphery so well. I used to do this at work quite a lot, cook Biryani I mean. I always cooked the Yakhni at home and took the rice and Yakhni + a large rice cooker to work. I just plugged it in and it cooked by itself!

You need about 1/2cup (the sort of cup measure that comes with rice cooker) rice person, less if you have many other dishes on the menu. It also depends on how rich you are going to make it. If it is meat Biryani, with lots of other ingredients for the ‘yakhni, it will be more filling. Basmati rice increases roughly 2-3 times in volume, depending on the quality. All of this must fit in the pan. So, you will need quite a large pan. I am not sure about the size of pan. Rice doesn’t take too long to cook, you would have already prepared your yakhni before, in your kitchen. So you will not run out of gas cooking the rice. It might be more of a problem finding a large gas ring and if it is windy, controlling.

For traditional dum, you put the pot on very low heat and put some charcoal on the lid. The lid should be tight fitting, if not, use a little dough to seal it.

Mamta