Calories in Vegetable Biryani

The recipe makes 2 plates from 100 g of raw rice, 100 g of onion, 50 g each of cauliflower, French beans, peas, carrot, potato and tomato, and 4 tablespoons of oil. One plate therefore holds 50 g of raw rice, 25 g of each vegetable and 2 tablespoons of oil. That is a modest amount of rice, less than a restaurant heaps on one plate, cooked with a generous amount of fat. A takeaway biryani is normally a far bigger portion of rice than this, often meant for more than one person, so the figure cannot be stretched to cover a full restaurant container.

Fat supplies 50% of the energy, carbohydrate 43% and protein 7%. The rice and vegetables carry very little fat of their own, so that share is the oil: the onions are fried in it and the vegetables and masala are cooked in it before the rice is layered. This is the reverse of the pulaos in the same recipe set, where rice leads and oil follows. It also explains why this plate, with less rice than a plate of vegetable pulao, still comes out higher: 527 kcal against 496 kcal.

One plate is about 25% of a sedentary man's daily energy requirement and 32% of a woman's, so it is a full meal by energy. By make-up it is lopsided: 28.7 g of fat and only 9.5 g of protein. The 10 g of fibre from the vegetables helps. The sensible partner is curd or raita, which adds protein without much fat; a second plate takes the total to 1,054 kcal and 57.4 g of fat. On a day that includes biryani, lighter cooking at the other meals balances the oil.

The surprise here is that a vegetable biryani can outweigh a meat one. In this recipe set the mutton biryani is 396 kcal a plate and this one 527 kcal, simply because this recipe uses more oil. Vegetables do not make a biryani light; the fat it is cooked in decides that. Biryani is a well-salted dish too. Anyone on a diet set by a doctor or dietitian for a heart condition or blood pressure should go by that plan.