Biryani and Pulao.

Pulao (pilaf, XXI.3) is the simpler dish: whole spices fried in ghee, perhaps onions and meat or vegetables, then washed and soaked basmati stirred in with a measured amount of stock or water, simmered covered until absorbed and rested. Biryani is a layered dish. Long-grain basmati is soaked and boiled in plenty of well-salted water with whole spices until about two-thirds cooked, then drained. A base of meat cooked in yogurt, fried onions and spices — or, in kacchi biryani, raw meat marinated in them — goes into a heavy pot; the rice is layered over it with fried onions (birista), mint, saffron milk and ghee; the lid is sealed with a rope of dough and the pot set over very low heat, often on a griddle, for dum.

Dum (दम, "breath") is steam cooking in a sealed pot: the moisture of the base turns to steam, which finishes the rice and carries the aromas up through it; nothing is stirred, so the grains stay long and separate. In pakki biryani the meat is already cooked, and the dum is short — 20 to 30 minutes. In kacchi biryani, the Hyderabadi classic, the raw meat at the bottom must cook through in the dum, which takes 45 minutes or more, so the rice is par-boiled less, the meat cut into moderate pieces and tenderised in a yogurt and papaya marinade, and the pot heavy enough to keep the bottom from burning. The workshop times a dum.

Below: the minutes for meat pieces of the size you choose, at the bottom of a biryani pot in liquid at the dum temperature you choose, to reach 74 °C at the centre (thermal bench, chicken-thigh composition, from 5 °C), against the minutes for rice par-boiled to the degree you choose to finish (teaching).