Sindhi biryani Period COrigin theory CVerified

Sindhi biryani is built by layering fragrant basmati rice with mutton and steaming it under a tight lid, the technique known as dum. What marks it out are the potato, the sour note of dried plums (aloo bukhara), and a strong chilli heat. It is rooted in the festive and everyday tables of Sindh province.

Rice and mutton were both long-established here, on Sindhi tables from early on. To them was added the potato, which had reached South Asia by way of the New World, along with dried plums for acidity and spice for heat. Layering the rice and meat and steaming them together draws the whole dish into one. It is the Sindhi regional form of biryani, a dish whose name is said to come from the Persian birian, frying before cooking.

There are two views of how Sindhi biryani took its present shape.

One is a story that after the Partition of 1947, Muhajirs who had migrated from India gave the dish its present form in the port city of Karachi, adding fierce heat, the sourness of dried plums, and potato to the local biryani. No source setting out this account has yet been found, however.

The other holds that this style already existed in Sindh as a local festive dish before the migration, and that the potato and dried plums were adaptations to local taste. Here too, no record of what Sindhi biryani was like before the migration has yet been found.

Of the dish as it is today, the food critic Bisma Tirmizi has called it a Mughlai twist on the pulao, rice cooked together with meat, with a fiercer taste. Masala-soaked potato and sour dried plums are named as what sets its flavour apart.

When, and by whose hands, it took this form, the sources do not yet tell us.