Biryani is often the main course in Muslim weddings with chicken (a meat considered prestigious) and was a celebrated dish in the Mughal Empire’s royal kitchen, where cooks coated each grain of rice with silver-flecked oil because it was believed to act as an aphrodisiac and aid digestion. Oddly enough, the first wave of Indian food into Britain shows no mention of the dish, and pilau seems to preferred in Victorian cookbooks (second, of course, to the famous curry).

A traditional biryani is made using the dum pukht method, which involves slowly cooking meat and vegetables over a low flame, ensuring that all the flavors are slowly released. Other methods to keep in mind are the kacchi method, where raw marinated meat is layered with uncooked rice and cooked together, and the pukka method, where meat and rice are partially cooked separately and then steamed together. So it’s the best combination of meat and rice.