Persian Rice Tahdig

Hi everybody and welcome back into my kitchen where I'm showing you how to make a series of some of my favorite Persian dishes. Now you can find all the recipes and ingredient lists on my blog which is aliasvibrantlife.com so don't worry but today I'm just going to show you how to make a very special dish which is Persian rice or chello as it's called and this time we're going to make it with something called tahdik. Tahdik just means bottom of the pot but it basically is a crispy buttery rice rosti that as you turn out the rice should sit on top and really it is the most delectable thing. We fought over this when we were kids so best to make more because it doesn't matter if you have any leftovers. I really doubt that you will. Now the important thing to remember when you're making rice is to go for the best top quality rice you can find. I'm going to be using very high quality basmati rice and the first step and I mean this is the thing when you're making Persian rice or rice in a Persian style. There is a bit of a process but it's actually not that difficult however you do need to soak the rice first in very heavily salted water so what I did was I took my cups of rice rinsed them in a sieve under the tap and then I've been soaking them in about two tablespoons of salt. I know that sounds like a lot and at least triple the amounts of water. It needs to soak for at least 30 minutes to an hour and this is really going to decrease the cooking time but while our rice is soaking we're going to make some saffron water. Really to get the best out of saffron you need to grind it into a powder and if you add water to it and let it sit you really get all those flavors coming out rather than just throwing the strands of saffron into whatever you're cooking because of course we all know how expensive saffron is and you really want to get the most out of it and saffron is such a quintessentially Persian ingredient again you know it's hand-picked crocus tips and the statement of the crocus and I mean it is just the most incredible spice and it is supposedly also an aphrodisiac. I bet you didn't know that. So I'm going to put it in my pestle and mortar. I'm also going to add a little bit of sugar into the saffron. I'm not adding it because I need sweetness I'm adding it to get a little bit of help with grinding the saffron into a powder and that's just going to make it easier. There we go and then you really want to have like a... somebody asked me if you could do this in a spice grinder and I've never tried that before I can't see how that would work so definitely stick with a pestle and mortar. Once you've finely ground your saffron into powder you're going to add some warm water and you'll see how beautiful you get this golden beautiful colour and there we go and we're going to use some of this saffron water in our rice when we're steaming it but first our rice has been soaking now for over an hour so I'm going to drain the rice rinse it under the some running water first and then I'm going to bring a pot of water to the boil that's happening right now and we're going to parboil our rice for six minutes. So my pot of water is at a rolling boil now I've also added another two tablespoons of salt into this water but think of it like you know when you're cooking pasta you've got to add salt to the water otherwise the pasta is not going to taste of anything. So I've got my rice that I rinsed under a sieve that has been soaking and I'm going to add it into the pot. Now what you want to do immediately is you do need a timer you can use your phone or you can use the timer on your oven if you have one and you're going to time for six minutes from the point at which you put the rice in so not from where you bring it to a reboil okay you want to make sure that you time six minutes from the point you put the rice into the pot. So I've just drained my rice it's par-cooked for six minutes and you can always try a few grains you'll see that it's almost there actually but still al dente a little bit needs a little bit more time for cooking I'm going to take about a cup full oops and uh put it in a separate bowl in the meantime by the way I've also washed my pot that I was using to boil the rice you don't want any starch sticking to the bottom ideally you want a really good non-stick pot I know in Iran most people who take these things seriously have their own pots specifically dedicated just to rice okay so I've got about a cup full of rice there I'm now going to add some melted butter as I said all these quantities are on my blog so please just go on there and have a look if you want to know how to make this rice properly I'm also going to add a couple of teaspoons of my saffron water which you really call it three this is going to give the tahdik at the bottom of the pot a really lovely golden colour and I'm going to add a large tablespoon two sort of measuring spoon tablespoons of natural yoghurt and give all of this a really good mix just very gently I don't want to break the rice up you can see that lovely yellowy colour or golden colour should we say I can smell the butter in the rice absolutely delicious now the yoghurt is going to help the tahdik stick together a little bit and form this beautiful golden crust so I'm getting my pot now there we go and I'm going to put the yoghurt rice and saffron mixture into my pot and actually on one of my cooking courses one of the ladies who came to one of my cooking courses suggested a genius thing which is a potato masher just to shluff it down and then the next thing I'm going to do is very gently shower the rice onto that base lots of steam okay from this point I'm just going to get a wooden spoon and make holes not all the way through past the base but just very small holes to help steam rise through the rice as well just a few knobs some of them let's do it this way rather I think butter makes everything better and I promise you when you cook rice this way it seems like it's quite a convoluted process but once you get the hang of it you will not cook rice any other way really there we go I'm also going to just drizzle another teaspoon to my saffron at the top just for a bit of colour and this is going to go on the hob I'm going to start it on quite a strong flame because I really want to get the tehadik starting to cook at the bottom I want to hear a little bit of a sizzle once I'm hearing that sizzle I'm going to turn the temperature down and I'm going to show you what I'm going to do with the lid so I've started to hear my tehadik at the bottom or the rice sizzling at the bottom where I put that yoghurt layer all I've done is I've tied a dishcloth around the lid and I've done this because I want steam rising to catch into the cloth I don't want water forming a nice sort of pool at the top of the lid and then dribbling back down into the rice because that's just going to make my rice soggy which is not the point here the point is you want this crispy rice rosti at the bottom of the pot so I can hear it sizzling away now and I'm going to seal it up and I'm going to turn the temperature really low it's on to the lowest as it is it can be on that ring now for this amount of rice I'm going to leave it there for 30 minutes I'm going to have a quick check but the last time I did three cups of rice in this pot it took me 40 minutes on a low heat before I got that really nice crispy disc I'd love to say there is a magic formula here you really just have to try it a few times and see it really depends on your pot it depends on your flame but it's exciting anyway so my rice is ready now I've checked the bottom and I can feel there's some crispy bits on the side I'm going to take my lid off lots of steam smells so fragrant and lovely I'm just going to wait for that to calm down a little bit now this is the tricky bit you've got to tip the rice out now also you don't have to do this you could spoon the rice out and lift the tahdig off the bottom it really doesn't matter you're going to probably have to cut it up anyway otherwise you're going to have very angry people some people getting bigger pieces than others I'm going to just tip it out in one piece it really doesn't matter if it comes out in one piece or not I've got a very nice non-stick pot here that's going to make it easier if you've got a stainless steel pot then maybe dip it into a sink with a few inches of very cold water that will help the rice contract and move away from the side of the pan okay let's have a go with this it's always tricky never the easiest but let us give it a go the moment of truth there she is beautiful golden crispy buttery tahdig now you can also pimp this up a little bit if you want if you can find them some lovely zuresh berries these are really they're just small little juicy tart little I guess bursts of acid you like that acidic burst which is so pleasant I will pan fry them with a little bit of butter also some nice fried onions as well onions that have been fried in butter so I'm getting a little steam bath here from all the rice I've also got some very beautiful little pistachios the pistachios that will also look beautiful on the rice you can really dress it exactly how you want but I would get in there first to get some of that tahdig