Before getting an instant pot, I’d only make biryani on special occasions. Now, we can make this one-pot brown rice and meat dish on a whim. I shared a recipe for chicken biryani a while back, but have gotten many requests for beef biryani and lamb biryani. I decided to use brown basmati rice in this recipe because it cooks perfectly in the same amount of time as either beef or lamb. If you read my post on cooking brown basmati rice in an Instant Pot then you already know it takes 22 minutes. Thankfully, you can cook beef and lamb cubes in that amount of time as well. The result: tender morsels of meat mixed in nutty brown rice. It’s no secret that I’m obsessed with my Instant Pot, especially when it comes to Indian cooking. In fact, I wrote a blog post with 5 Reasons Why Instant Pot is Perfect for Indian cooking. The main reason: what traditionally took several pots and pans plus several hours to cook can now be made in a single pot! Biryani is an example of one of those recipes that used to take hours to make, a dish reserved for special occasions. Now we eat some type of biryani almost weekly – sometimes we’ll have shrimp biryani and other weeks we’ll enjoy egg biryani, keema biryani or veggie biryani. Some background on biryani: there are two main methods to making biryani: pakki biryani and kacchi biryani. With pakki biryani, you cook the meat separately and partly cook the rice then you have to layer them together then cook the whole thing together. A lot of steps, right? The only reason I would ever use this method is if I have leftover curry that I want to use (like my leftover goat curry biryani). With kacchi biryani, you marinate the meat for a long time then cook it with the rice over low heat. Then there’s my method. Skip the marinating and cook both the meat and rice together in ONE pot in an electric pressure cooker. This new method is clearly my favorite one. You get all the same flavor of traditional lamb biryani (or beef biryani) with the least amount of work. That said, my method works with brown rice because the cook time for the meat and the rice works out perfectly. I can’t wait to hear what you think of this dish! If you love it, then be sure to check out my Instant Pot Cookbook: Indian Food Under Pressure for more Indian recipes! Like this recipe? Pin it to your favorite Pinterest board now so you will remember to make it later!
