Kolkata Biryani Moshla

How do you make good biryani? It is a combination of quality ingredients—meat, rice, spices, and aromatics—skill, and above everything else, experience. Making a biryani is like building a monument. Just as you would raise a building, brick by brick, down from its foundation, so it is when making biryani. This is how YouTuber and Kolkata biryani–expert, Salma The Chef, describes the process.

One of the key pillars of the Kolkata biryani is the biryani moshla. Most of us know what spices go in a Kolkata biryani. However, it is the proportion in which these spices are mixed that produces the perfect biryani flavour. Salma has spent years tinkering with these ratios. She obsesses over the quality and freshness of the spices. She looks for the exact roast level of each individual spice, some she uses in both their roasted and unroasted forms. 

That is why Salma’s Kolkata biryani spice mix is actually two spice mixes—BIRYANI MOSHLA 1 & BIRYANI MOSHLA 2. When you add these two biryani spice mixes in the different stages while making biryani, you get the unique, well-rounded Kolkata biryani flavour.

Insiya and Saptarshi from Bong Eats, together with Salma and the team at amar khamar, have worked to standardise the recipe for production in larger batches, while maintaining the qualities that make a homemade biryani spice mix great—the freshness, the purity, and the love. 

Freshness: These spice mixes are made by hand in small batches, and the date of grinding of the spice is printed on the packets. You will always know how fresh your biryani moshla is.

Purity: Commercial spice mixes often use filler ingredients to save cost. It is not uncommon to see cardamom skins instead of whole cardamom, cinnamon leaves instead of bark cinnamon, and use of lower grade spices since they are going to be ground anyway. These biryani spice mixes are made using the exact recipe as the one available for free on Bong Eats’ Youtube channel, just like you would make them at home if you were following the recipe. There are no filler ingredients. No compromises are made on the quality of the spices.

Care: Genuine care goes into the making of these spice mixes. For example, not all spices in the biryani spice mix need to be roasted to the same degree. So, the team at Amar Khamar roasts them separately from one another to get the perfect flavour. This is something that would be laborious to do at home for small quantities.

The roasted spices are then ground together, and passed through a fine sieve. What is left in the sieve is hand-ground on a stone sheel nora and strained again. Why? Because running the electric blender longer would produce a lot of heat and roast the spices more than they need to be. This process produces a flavour that can only be matched by the most fastidious home-cook.

When using this biryani moshla, you don’t need a lot of it. For a biryani with 1 kg of rice and 2 kg of meat, you only need 8 grams (roughly 3 teaspoons’ worth) from each of the two packets. Remember to follow our recipe at least the first time you use these spice mixes.

Our biryani moshla set is made fresh using Salma The Chef’s recipe, just as you would make it at home. No fillers, no hidden ingredients—just good quality spices, roasted and mixed with care. 

what does this product contain?

• BIRYANI MOSHLA 1—This is a combination of fourteen whole spices, each individually roasted to perfection and freshly ground. This blend has a deep, warm, toasty, nutty flavour.
• BIRYANI MOSHLA 2—This is a combination of two unroasted, freshly ground spices. It has a sharp, fresh, vibrant flavour.

These two blends used in tandem produce a well-rounded Kolkata biryani flavour. 

how to use it

Use BIRYANI MOSHLA 1 and BIRYANI MOSHLA 2 in equal quantites to make mutton biryani and chicken biryani. If you don’t have enough time on hand, but want something easy, simple, and elegant, try this khushka. We also use this spice mix to make Kolkata chicken, mutton or beef chaap.

For more details on how to use our BIRYANI MOSHLA set, get detailed recipes, a printable shopping list, and and all other tools and techniques needed to make biryani, go to: www.bongeats.com/biryani-moshla

our philosophy

We believe that the way we cultivate, process, buy, and cook our food can change the world for better. Every time you decide to buy food that has been produced in a sustainable way, you make the world a better place. Learn more about our manifesto.