Biryani is a rice based dish that consists of meat or veggies as the chief ingredient. Plenty of herbs and spices go into cooking Biryani and the meat and vegetables are layered and cooked. Biryani in Persian means cooking and roasting and the word Biryani comes from the same.
This special tasty recipe has its origins in Persia. The story goes that the nomads and the tribals carried some dried meat and rice with them during their travels, and they layered the meat and rice and added some dry herbs and nuts and let it simmer on a wood fire for sometime and then buried it in the sand for a couple of hours, after which the dish was deemed ready. It was a fairly simple form of preparing Biryani those days, utilizing nature and its resources.
Nowadays there are plenty of varieties of Biryani prepared using a lot of diverse cooking styles. There are probably more than a hundred varieties of Biryani prepared using various combinations of meat and vegetables.
Biryani has meat and rice as its necessary ingredients. The rest of the ingredients, vary based on the type and style of the Biryani being prepared.