Nizami style · Hyderabad

Kitchen open nowDelivery 30–40 min

Ustaad's Dum Biryani.
Sealed in a handi, slow-cooked on dum.

Authentic Hyderabadi chicken dum biryani — whole spices, aged basmati and the patience of the old Nizami kitchens. Delivered hot to your door.

Order Biryani Our dum craft

Only 40 handis cooked fresh dailyOrdered 60+ times today

Kachchi dumWhole spicesRaita & salan included

2-year aged basmatiDrained at exactly 70%Each spice roasted alone12-hour marinadeBirista fried gold, never blackSix drops of kewra — never sevenRose → kewra → saffron, 30 seconds apartSealed with dough, cooked over a tawaThe Nizami way2-year aged basmatiDrained at exactly 70%Each spice roasted alone12-hour marinadeBirista fried gold, never blackSix drops of kewra — never sevenRose → kewra → saffron, 30 seconds apartSealed with dough, cooked over a tawaThe Nizami way

The Ustaad's way

Nizami tradition, sealed under dum

No shortcuts. All the spices, and the traditional biryani-making techniques of Hyderabad.

01
The marinade
Chicken rests in yogurt, fried onions, green chillies and whole spices until it drinks in every note.
02
The layering
Long-grain basmati, par-boiled with whole spices, is layered over the marinated chicken in the handi.
03
The dum
The handi is sealed and cooked slowly over low flame, so the rice and chicken steam in their own aroma.

The science of dum

Old palace wisdom. Modern chemistry agrees.

The Nizam's ustaads never wrote a formula — yet every rule they handed down has a reason you can measure.

70%

The white line

Rice leaves the boiling water at exactly 70% cooked. Bite a grain: a thin white core, about 30% of it, must remain. That core is the dum's reserved work.

2.5–3×

Aged grain

Two-year aged basmati absorbs predictably and stretches 2.5 to 3 times its length. Fresh rice splits and swells sideways under steam.

140° / 160°

Two temperatures

Coriander needs 140°C to release linalool. Cloves scorch above 160°C. In one pan both can't be right — so every spice is roasted alone.

12 hrs

To the bone

A four-hour marinade flavours chicken about 4–5mm deep. Twelve hours carries the masala all the way to the bone.

Fat

The carrier

Most aromatic spice molecules dissolve in fat, not water. Birista oil and ghee build a fat matrix that carries spice into the meat — curd alone can't.

Drops of kewra

Kewra is a perfume, not a liquid. Six drops across two layers. One more and the biryani smells of a laboratory, not a kitchen.

Inside the handi

Five layers. One seal.

Each layer is its own event with its own logic. Then the lid is sealed with dough, the handi sits on a tawa that spreads the flame, and the dum takes over.

Layer V

The Crown

Rose water, then 30 seconds, then kewra, then 30 seconds, then saffron milk. Ghee drops around the rim, a generous scatter of birista, mint and coriander. "These three are not friends. Each must speak its full truth before the next arrives."

Tap a layer to look inside

From the Ustaad's Book of Dum

“Because each one has two voices. Water hears one. Fat hears the other. If you only add them once, you only hear half the song.”
— Ustaad ji · On adding whole spices twice

The seal is about to break.
Don't let your handi go to someone else.

Nizami chicken dum biryani with raita and mirchi ka salan.

Ustaad's Dum Biryani.Sealed in a handi, slow-cooked on dum.

One biryani. Three handi sizes.