Bread Tahdig Recipe
Servings: 4 people
Ingredients
- 3 cup Rice as required
- Bread
- 1 tbsp Salt
Instructions
- Soaking the rice: Clean the rice well, then rinse it several times and soak it in water for a few hours. If you're short of time (say10 minutes), you'd better soak the rice in warm water.
- Boiling the water: In a non-stick pot, pour some water and put it on the heat. The amount of water should be enough for two knuckles to be above the rice. Bring the water to a boil.
- Pour the rice in the boiling water.
- Add some salt. As for 3 cups of rice roughly one tablespoon of salt will be enough. Stir a bit so as not to let the rice grains stick together.
- Draining the rice: Having half-cooked the rice, remove it from the heat and pour it into a drain. Rice grains ought not to be too soft, but rather firm. Do not put the lid on the pot. (cook until al dente)As for testing, when you take a grain of rice and place it under your teeth, the inside should still be slightly firm while the outside is cooked. Never allow the rice to cook and soften completely since in the next step they're going to steam and soften nicely.As a general rule, depending on the quality of rice it takes 3 to 5 minutes to get half-cooked. Of course, the cooking time depends on the grade of the rice and the gas heat; some sooner, some later (and some never these days!).
- Putting the bread in the pot: To make the bread tahdig, put the non-stick pot on low heat and pour some oil into it. About 4 tablespoons would be enough for a small pot.Take a thin slice of bread and cut it to the size of the pot. Once the oil is hot, put the bread in the oil to get fried. Fry it slightly on both sides.Note that it's enough if it's fried slightly, and there's no need to be fried completely. When steaming rice, the bread is going to get brittle and crispy well.The heat at this stage should be slightly higher than when steaming rice so that the bread could be fried.
- Pouring the rice on the bread: After the bread is fried, reduce the heat (a faint heat to steam the rice). Then pour the rice on the bread. Collect the rice from the corners of the pot and pile it up in the center.Make a few holes in the rice using the handle of the skimmer so that the steam could reach the middle of the pile as well and the steam-cooking is done faster. Pour kind of 4 tablespoons of oil on everywhere on the surface of the rice so that its grains could separate more easily after cooking.
- Waiting for the polo to cook: Put the lid on the pot and wait for the rice to cook and tahdig form on the bottom of the pot.The time to steam rice depends on its quality, but generally it takes some 40 to 60 minutes for the rice to cook and the tahdig to form. In the first 5 minutes, turn the heat up a little bit (just a little) as to let the tahdig form, then turn the heat down so that the rice gets steamed.
- After the required time, remove the lid and test the rice. If it's cooked evenly, it means it's ready. If you feel it's not cooked yet, put the lid on immediately so that the steam doesn't escape.
- When your Persian rice with bread tahdig is ready, put it in a dish and then separate tahdig from the pot, cut it, and put it in the dish (as a garnish).
