I have long written about how much I love to buy a random ingredient at the grocery store (especially one that’s on sale) and figure out how to use it.
But I don’t think I’ve outed Joey as being the same way—except with spices and sauces.
I can’t even count the number of times we come home with a new sauce (almost always spicy) or a strange bottle of seasoning.
One of his recent finds I believe intrigued him for two reasons: one, there was a lot of Arabic-style writing on the packaging and, two, it was in an all-metal tin, making it look especially exotic.
So, I had to figure out what biryani spices were for. Apparently, it’s for a dish by the same name.
It turns out, we stumbled our uncultured selves into quite the culinary controversy, as when I tried to figure out what biryani is, I was greeted with several points of view as to where it actually originated.
An article from the BBC claims “There can be little doubt that biriyani originated in Iran. Even the name biriyani can be traced to the original Persian “birinj biriyan”—literally, fried rice,” but many argue that India made biriyani/biryani what it is once it crossed over their borders.
Regardless, I had a spice to use, so I started researching recipes.
I landed on a blog called “Aayi’s Recipes.” Her website is a pretty bare bones, and she writes her recipe instructions kind of like you’re trying to follow along with a friend who is making everything from memory and without measuring, so I will try to clean that up below with some of my own clarifications and modifications. You can find her original post at https://www.aayisrecipes.com/rice-items/biryani-with-biryani-mix/.
Biryani
Ingredients
- 2 cups Basmati rice
- 3 cups chicken stock or broth
- Canola or vegetable oil
- 1 large yellow onion sliced
- 7 to 8 chicken thighs I used bone-in. You could use boneless.
- 2 medium fresh tomatoes diced
- 2 large carrots peeled and diced
- 1 large Russet potato cut into half-inch pieces
- 1 spicy green chile I used a serrano, cut into small rounds
- 1/2 cup fresh or frozen peas or green beans
- 1 tablespoon biryani seasoning
- salt to taste
Instructions
- Add the rice and stock to a pot with a lid. Bring the mixture to a boil, and then lower the heat to a simmer. Let it cook until the rice is about three-quarters of the way cooked through. Remove it from heat, and set it aside.
- In a Dutch oven, heat about one tablespoon of oil over medium heat. Add the sliced onions and saute, stirring regularly, until they are golden brown. Remove the onions and set them aside for now.
- Add the chicken (add more oil, if necessary), and saute until all of the sides are nicely browned. Remove the chicken to a plate at the side.
- Add in the tomatoes, carrots, potato, chile pepper, peas, biryani seasoning and salt, and stir to combine the spices and let the tomatoes begin to give up their juices.
- Remove half of the vegetables to a bowl at the side, and add half the chicken thighs to the pot.
- Top with half of the prepared rice, and then half of the fried onions.
- Add the rest of the vegetable mixture and chicken, and top with the rest of the rice and the rest of the fried onions. Pour one-half cup of water over the top of the mixture, and turn the heat to low. Put a lid on the Dutch oven, and let the mixture simmer for about 30 minutes. At that point, check the internal temperature of the chicken thighs. If it’s not at least 165 degrees, put the lid back on the pot and let it cook longer, until it reaches that temperature.
- Remove the thighs, and then mix the rice and vegetables to combine all the flavors. (You may need to add more salt, to taste, at this point, too.)
- Serve the thighs with the rice and vegetables on the side.
This was delicious. The biryani spices are wonderfully aromatic. There are quite a few recipes to make a homemade blend, if you don’t stumble across it in the grocery store like we did, and those blends feature lots of warm spices like cinnamon, anise, cardamom and more.
Joey was pretty proud of the final product, and since we have an entire tin of biryani seasoning, I’m sure we’ll be making this again in the near future.
It gave us plenty of leftovers, too, which was really nice.
I guess we’ll just have to put up with each other’s love of grabbing random ingredients at the store. At least they generally end in fun experiments like this.
This piece first appeared in print Aug. 6, 2026.
Spice Up Your Life is a weekly newspaper column written by Lindsey Young in south central Kansas. If you are interested in sponsoring this column, please contact us through the “Contact Lindsey” link at the top of the page.
