• Grind all the ingredients listed under garam masala to a fine powder.

Marinate Chicken

• Clean the chicken and cut it into 2” pieces. Wash the chicken and squeeze all the water from it. This is very important that you squeeze all the water from the pieces or put it a colander to let water drain away.
• Mix all the ingredients of the marinade and marinate for at least 1 hour or overnight in the fridge.

Cook Rice

• Wash rice and soak for at least 30 minutes.
• In a big pot bring water to a boil, add all the spices listed under cooking rice and mix well.
• Add rice and continue to cook until you get a one good boil, i.e rice should roll over with boiling water. It takes about 2 ½ – 3 minutes on my stove. Drain the rice and keep aside.
  

Other Preparations

• While pot of water is boiling, take a pan, heat oil and fry the onions until light golden brown.
• Soak saffron in hot milk.

Arranging Chicken Biryani

• Now its time to arrange chicken and rice in layers, one layer of chicken and two layers of rice. In a heavy bottom sauce pan, pour ½ the oil at the bottom, arrange the chicken pieces and sprinkle some oil on top of the chicken.
• Arrange ½ the boiled rice on the chicken pieces, sprinkle some oil, ½ the fried onions and ½ the saffron milk.
• Repeat the above step for the last layer, I.e, arrange the last layer of rice. Spread the rest of the rice, sprinkle all the oil, fried onions and the saffron milk.
• Now, we need to seal the the container and make it air tight so that the steam doesn’t escape when we cook. In India, flour dough or a big cloth is used to seal the container and the cover together. Here, I use an aluminum sheet. take 2 sheets of aluminum foil (the sheets should be bigger than the diameter of the sauce pan) and place it on top of the sauce pan and then cover it with the lid. We will have aluminum sheets between the pan and its lid. Since we took the sheets bigger than the diameter of the pan, we will use that to seal the pan and the lid.
• Put a heavy object (motor pesto or heavy pan or skillet) on the top of the container, so that the steam doesn’t escape easily.
  
• Pot of chicken biryani on stovetop
• Cooking dum biryani with a sealed sauce pan and a heavy object on it
• Cook biryani for 8-10 minutes on high until stream escapes from the foil seal. Then reduce the flame to medium low and continue to cook for another 20 minutes. 
 Let it sit for 10-15 minutes before opening it.
• Mix the rice and serve it hot with raita or chicken shorva or mutton shorva.