Ingredients for Indian Pilau Rice

Series Summary

Indian Cuisine is part of a unique and rich cultural heritage that traces back to the Vedic period of India's history. Full of herbs and spices, Indian food has been influenced by the vegetarian roots of Hindu Ayurveda and Islamic cuisine of the Middle East. In India, food is not just food, but a distinguishing marker within India's intricate caste system. Ever since the 15th century, Indian spices have been traded throughout Europe and slowly has began to influence Western food culture. Today, it is not uncommon to go to Indian food restaurants or to find Indian spices in Western cuisine. In fact, Indian food has become a delicacy by sheik culture across the Western world. As such, it is important to know how to cook different Indian food recipes.

In this free video series, our expert will show you how to make pilau rice. This traditional Indian food is a great way to spice things up. Why have plain old white rice when you can have this flavorful basmati rice recipe. Our expert will show you all the steps for preparing this wonderful dish, from frying the spices, to steaming the rice. If you love Indian food but have been afraid to make something on your own, this simple pilau rice recipe is the dish for you, and is sure to please the whole family.

Video Transcript

"ALLEN DIWAN: Hi, my name is Allen Diwan and I'm the chef and owner of Kashmir Indian Restaurant in Budapest and we are here on behalf of Expert Village. And the next dish we're going to make is pilau rice. We're going to make pilau rice with green peas. And this pilau rice is called dum pilau rice; dum means steaming something. So, we're going to make this pilau rice by steaming the rice. And the process of steaming ensures that the rice is cooked to the right texture, cooked evenly and they don't stick together and the other thing is that they absorb the aromas of the spices very well. The spice--the pilau is a side dish so we do not want it to be very spicy but we want it to be very aromatic. So, we're going to make--we're going to use basmati rice. Basmati rice, Indian or Pakistani basmati rice and these are long grain basmati rice. We have to soak them in cold water, clean them once. The process of cleaning them once will take out a little bit of the starch which will help us to cook the rice and it won't stick together. And another thing is it will clean the rice and also, we'll soak the rice for about half an hour. Soaking the rice helps it to cook slightly faster and we'll use frozen green peas. Frozen green peas. Of course, if you're using fresh green peas, then you have to cook it slightly further for a couple of more minutes."