Just one mouthful of the biryani, laced not just with kismis and cashew nuts, but with enough sprinkling of muhabath (love), can take the biryani lover to the seventh heaven of foodie bliss. But, the biryani is not just one avatar, it has multiple avatars.
Now, a Twitter feud is brewing over the best biryani in India. It all started when a Twitter user tweeted “Kolkata Biryani with aloo is the biggest scam after 2G scam.” It got around 130 retweets and a journalist Rohini Singh replied saying Lucknow biryani is the best and that Hyderabadi biryani is over spiced.
This was good enough for all the food lovers across India to start a war of words over their best Biryani preference. But it didn't stop there.
Veteran journalist and food critic Vir Sanghvi tweeted “I can eat a Hyderabadi Biryani once every two months. An Avadhi Biryani once a month. A Calcutta Biryani once a week. A Kerala Biryani every day!"
This was shocking to many users where some said that there’s no such thing as a Kerala biryani.
While one asked what was the special distinguishing feature of Kerala biryani, Sanghvi said that it was the rice and the spicing that makes it the best.
Another Twitter user Judish tweeted “This gives confidence for me to start a Thalassery biriyani joint in Hyderabad” to which Sanghvi said that he should.
NITI Aayog CEO Amitabh KanT joined the Twitter battle.
He tweeted “The best biryani in world is Thalassery fish biryani from Paris restaurant. It’s made using short-grained local rice with white aikora or kingfish also known as king mackerel in Thalassery ( Kerala). Its awesome & beats all other biryanis by miles.”
But if you think this dispute was just between these food lovers, you are wrong. This provoked K T Rama Rao, Telangana Minister of MA&UD, Industries and IT&C, to reply “All bragging rights on best biryani in the world belong rightfully to Hyderabad Amitabh Ji. Dare I say that the rest are only poor imitations. Even UNESCO recognised our gourmet culture recently & conferred the title of ‘creative city of gastronomy’.”
Many have added spice to the debate pointing out their choice of Biryani from across India.
In Kerala, the biryani has enough local varieties, with Malabari biryani leading the charts.
After that, Malayalis seem to be most familiar with the Hyderabadi biryani, believed to have been originated in the royal kitchens of the Nizams of Hyderabad. The Hyderabadi biryani has both the Pakki and Kacchi versions. The Pakki version has the rice and meat cooked separately, to be mixed together in layers later. In the Kucchi version, both the meat and rice are cooked together from the very beginning.
