Indian Rice & Biryani Recipes
Rice in an Indian kitchen is not a side dish. It is a foundation. It holds the curries, soaks up the dal, and carries the flavours of whatever is cooked alongside it. This collection covers the full range, from the simplest jeera rice to slow-cooked biryanis that take most of the afternoon.
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Rice in Indian life
Rice is not just food in India. It marks every significant moment from birth to death. It is present at every threshold, and that is no coincidence. It is the most important crop on the subcontinent and the most culturally loaded grain in Indian life.
START WITH THESE
Six rice dishes worth learning
THE EVERYDAY AND THE CELEBRATION
About this collection
From grades five to nine, I ate dahi rice almost every day. My mother made it for me. She knew I would not eat the dal, knew I was the picky one, and so she made curd rice separately because that was what I would eat. My brother was the opposite - he would only eat dal and rice. So every day she cooked both. Dal for him, curd rice for me, plain rice for both, and whatever sabzi was on the table for everyone. She made it work somehow, every single day.
Weekends were different. Sometimes, not every week, my mother would make shrimp biryani. Those were the happiest days. The whole house smelled different. You knew before you even reached the kitchen that something good was happening.
That is the full range of what rice is in an Indian home. The everyday care of a mother making curd rice for a child who will not eat anything else. The celebration of a slow-cooked biryani on a Sunday. Everything in between.
I am South Indian, which means rice has been on my plate every single day of my life. That also means I have strong opinions about how it should be cooked.
BROWSE BY TYPE
Explore rice and biryani recipes
Biryanis
The celebration rice dishes of India. Each one different - different region, different spice logic. What they share: layered, fragrant, cooked until every grain has absorbed the flavours around it. I think a raita is the only accompaniment a biryani needs.
Pulaos and flavoured rice
Simpler than biryani, faster to make, equally satisfying. Jeera rice is the weeknight default. Tawa pulao is Mumbai street food made at home. Ghee rice, fragrant with whole spices and finished with cashews, is a hot favourite at Mangalorean and Kerala households when guests come over.
South Indian Rice
The rice dishes of South India that the rest of the world is still discovering. Ganji is the Mangalorean rice porridge eaten with dried fish chutney - one of the most distinctive pairings in the Mangalorean Food collection.
Khichdi
Rice and lentils cooked together. The original one-pot Indian meal. What you make when you want something simple and satisfying, or when you have 20 minutes and nothing else planned.
Plain rice & Cooking guides
The foundation. Every other rice dish on this site starts here. Once you can cook plain rice well, everything else becomes straightforward.
MEAL COMBINATIONS
Build a meal around rice
- North Indian weeknight → Jeera rice with dal tadka, roti, and sabzi (vegetable side dish)
- South Indian weekday → Plain rice with rasam, a sabzi (vegetable side dish), and curd rice at the end of the meal
- Comfort meal → Curd rice with sabzi (vegetable side dish) and pickle on the side
- Street food at home → Mumbai tawa pulao with yoghurt or raita
- One-pot quick dinner → Moong dal khichdi with pickle and papad
FREQUENTLY ASKED
Questions about rice & biryani
Both are rice dishes cooked with spices and often with vegetables or meat. The difference is in the method. Pulao is a one-pot dish where rice and other ingredients are cooked together from the start. Biryani uses a layering method where partially cooked rice is layered over a separately cooked base and then cooked together under steam, sometimes sealed with dough. Biryani takes more time. Pulao is the weeknight dish. Biryani is the weekend one.
Curd rice is plain cooked rice mixed with yoghurt and finished with a light tempering of mustard seeds, dried red chilli, and curry leaves. It is tangy, cooling, and deeply comforting. In South India, it is often the last dish eaten at a meal, after everything else.
Ganji is the Mangalorean rice porridge, made with brown rice simmered to a soft, thick consistency. It is the Tulu Nadu equivalent of congee. It is eaten for breakfast, for dinner, and whenever the body needs something simple and restorative. It is one of the most underdocumented dishes in Indian food writing outside the Mangalorean community.
Yes. The Instant Pot produces a very good biryani, particularly for chicken, prawn, and vegetable versions. The method is slightly different from the traditional dum method as you do not get the same degree of layering, but the flavour is excellent, and the timing is much faster. The Instant Pot biryani recipes on this site have been tested to get the rice and protein cooked at the same rate.
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Related Collections
The biryanis here are served with raita. The plain rice goes with curries and dal & legumes. The khichdi can go alongside a sabzi. And ganji belongs with dried fish chutney from the Mangalorean Food collection - one of the most specific and underdocumented pairings in Indian home cooking.
