I do not come from a rice-eating family. My mother was a master of potatoes, bread, and in later years coinciding with the airing of HBO’s The Sopranos, various types of pasta. Rice was reserved for the nights my dad pulled out the electric wok and made American-style stir-fry, complete with canned bamboo shoots and water chestnuts of course. I usually opted out of the rice, not because I was any sort of carb conscious, but because it was so underwhelming – short-grain, wet, and heavy, straight from the orange “boil-in-the-bag” Uncle Ben’s box. I didn’t understand the appeal of any sort of rice until waaaay later in life, when I first tasted fluffy, cumin-scented basmati at an Indian restaurant.
But my rice appreciation reached an entirely different level when I met my husband. He grew up with long-grain rice at most meals, richly flavored with meat stock and a variety of spices. We bought a rice cooker, and I learned how to roast chicken or meat over rice, allowing the drippings to coat each grain with savory goodness. When he is having a bad day, I know that it can usually be improved by ordering goat biryani takeout for dinner.
So it shouldn’t have surprised me all that much when he made a request for egg biryani seemingly out of the blue a few weeks ago. Always up for a food adventure (and browsing recipes online!), I set about finding the perfect recipe. Most seemed straightforward enough – boil eggs, cook rice to just-shy-of-done, make a sauce with onions/tomatoes/spices/yogurt, and layer it all in a big pot to steam together. But Omar had a very specific vision. He didn’t want hard-boiled eggs, rubbery and crumbling between the tines of your fork. No, he wanted a biryani with soft-boiled eggs, jammy and unctuous, yielding to the slightest pressure and flowing over perfectly seasoned grains of rice.
But how to make this vision a reality? The eggs must be cooked thoroughly enough to peel before being layered with the rice, where the final steam would surely take them over the edge to hard-boiled. You could theoretically leave soft-boiled eggs out of the pot during the final steam and add them later, but miss out on all the flavor the sauce imparts to their whites during this stage. As per usual, my husband came up with a genius solution.
He first steamed the eggs (his preferred method) just until the whites were set, followed by a shock of ice water. Then he carefully peeled them and placed them in the freezer while I finished the rice and sauce. This kept them cold enough to delay cooking during the final steam, leaving their soft-boiled centers perfectly jammy. I swear, this man is perfect.
The actual recipe I can only take minimal credit for – it is a riff on Shilpa Uskokovic’s Ethereal Egg Biryani, with the alliums toned down, tomatoes dialed up, and some liberties with the spices that I settled on after making this multiple times in the past few weeks (yes, its that good). It’s on regular rotation now that we have the secret to perfectly soft eggs every time.
Soft-Boiled Egg Biryani
Ingredients
- 2 cups basmati rice
- 1/4 cup milk of choice
- 1/2 tsp saffron
- 6-8 eggs
- 8 cloves garlic, peeled
- 4 tsp minced ginger
- 1 serrano chile, seeded if desired
- 1/2 cup sour cream or full-fat yogurt
- 3 tsp salt
- 2 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp cumin seeds
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/2 tsp ground black pepper
- 1/4 tsp fennel seeds
- 1/4 tsp cardamom
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1/4 tsp dried mint
- pinch nutmeg and cloves
- 1/4 cup vegetable oil* or ghee
- 1 medium red or yellow onion, thinly sliced
- 2 small-medium tomatoes, chopped
- 2 tbsp tomato paste
- 1/4 chopped cilantro
- lime wedges, to serve
Directions
- Soak the rice for 30 minutes with 1 tsp kosher salt. Microwave the milk in a small bowl, then add the saffron and let steep until you are ready to assemble the biryani.
- While rice is soaking, place a steamer basket over a medium pot filled with 3-inches of rapidly simmering water; do not allow water to touch basket. Place eggs in steamer basket and cover, steam for 8 minutes. Remove promptly to a bowl of ice water, allow to cool, and peel. Set aside.
- In a food processor or blender, combine garlic, ginger, chile if using, sour cream or yogurt, and all dry spices. Blend/process until smooth. Set aside.
- Drain and rinse rice in a fine-mesh colander (you can repeatedly swish around and drain until the water runs clear if you don’t have this type of colander).
- Add more water to the pot you used to steam the eggs and return to a boil. Cook the rice until just al dente, about 5-6 minutes (err on the underdone side if in doubt). Drain and set aside.
- Crumple a sheet of parchment or wax paper, uncrumple and use it to line a bowl large enough to hold your eggs (this will allow keep the eggs from freezing to the sides of the bowl). Place in the freezer until you are ready to assemble the biryani. Make sure they are in there for a minimum of 15 minutes but no longer than 25 (remove to fridge if you need more time to assemble the biryani).
- Heat oil in a large heavy pot with a lid over medium heat (a Dutch oven works great) until shimmering. Add the onion and fry until golden brown and soft, 8-10 minutes.
- Add the tomatoes and cook until the begin to break down and give up their juices, stirring frequently, 2-3 minutes.
- Add the tomato paste and cook for another minute, do not allow to burn.
- Add the spice/dairy paste and cook for 10 minutes – the mixture should become shiny and thick.
- Add a 1/2 cup of water and stir, cook for 1 more minute.
- Arrange the eggs in the sauce, then add the rice on top in an even layer. Sprinkle the saffron milk over the top, then cover with the lid. Steam over low heat – check at 8 minutes, if rice is not yet steaming, cover again and check at 10 minutes.
- Sprinkle with the chopped cilantro. Using a wooden spoon, gently mix the biryani, pulling up the sauce and eggs from the bottom without breaking the eggs, creating a mix of white and “sauced” biryani.
- Serve with lime wedges.
