Forget boiling eggs and cooking rice separately when making egg biryani. With my instant pot egg biryani recipe, you can cook hardboiled eggs AND biryani rice at the same time in the same pot!
This one-pot egg biryani is so easy to make! You can cook the eggs and the rice together in your instant pot and the two turn out perfectly cooked: bright yellow yolks and separate grains of rice. Not only is this dish easy to make and budget-friendly it’s also absolutely delicious!
Watch How to Make Instant Pot Egg Biryani:
We’re going to bloom whole spices in oil and then sauté onions, ginger, garlic, tomatoes and spices.
Add water and rice to the pot, mix well, then put a trivet into the pot and place eggs on top. See? We’re cooking the rice and eggs together!
Remove the eggs, peel ’em and then sauté them on the stovetop with spices to give them some color (optional). Mix the eggs back into the rice. Simple, beautiful, tasty.
I am all about making one-pot biryanis because they are just so easy to make AND they taste just as good as biryani made the time-consuming way (cooking everything half-way then layering it together, then cooking it again). If you have an electric pressure cooker like the instant pot, then biryani suddenly becomes so much more accessible. It doesn’t have to be a “special occasion dish” because it’s easy enough to make on a weeknight.
Love Biryani?
Biryani is my favorite type of Indian dish because there are so many varieties and so many different ways to make this dish. I have several biryani recipes on my blog. Here are a few to try next:
- Vegetable Biryani
- Shrimp Biryani
- Chicken Biryani
- Pour and Cook Chicken Biryani (the easiest way to make biryani)
- Pour and Cook Lamb Biryani
- Keema Biryani (reader favorite!)
I have to tell you that I like this egg biryani just as much as my other meat-based biryani recipes. It is just as flavorful and delicious, if not more so.
You know how Pizza Fridays are a thing? Well, I’m switching things up at our house and we’re now doing Biryani Fridays. We are observing Lent right now, so now I’ve got three biryani options for Fridays: shrimp biryani, vegetable biryani and this egg biryani. I think I need to share a fish biryani recipe too!
I can’t wait to hear what y’all think of this egg biryani recipe. I’m so proud of it! I hope you love it a lot!
Instant Pot Egg Biryani
Instant Pot Egg Biryani
Ingredients
- 1 cup basmati rice soaked 15 minutes (highly recommend this brand)
- 2 tablespoons oil or ghee
Whole Spices:
- 5 cardamom pods
- 4 whole cloves
- 2 bay leaf
- ½ cinnamon stick
- ½ teaspoon cumin seeds
- ½ teaspoon fennel seeds
- 2 tablespoons oil
- 1 onion thinly sliced
- 2 teaspoons minced garlic
- 1 teaspoon minced ginger
Ground Spices:
- 1 ½ teaspoons salt
- 1 teaspoon coriander powder
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon garam masala
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon cayenne adjust to taste
- ¼ teaspoon ground cumin
- ¼ teaspoon turmeric
- 1 tomato diced
- 1 cup water
- 6 eggs
- Cilantro leaves chopped
- Mint leaves chopped
- Ghee coated cashews and raisins optional*
Instructions
- Soak the basmati rice in cold water for 15 minutes. Drain, rinse and set aside.
- Press the sauté button and add the oil to the pot. Allow it a minute to heat up, then add the whole spices and stir. Once the cumin seeds brown, add the onions. Stir-fry for 5-7 minutes, or until the onions begin to brown.
- Add the garlic, ginger, ground spices and stir, then add the tomato and cook for 2-3 minutes, or until it softens a bit.
- Add rice and water to the pot, then place a trivet or steamer basket into the pot (on top of the rice). Place the eggs on the trivet or steamer basket.
- Secure the lid, close the pressure valve, and cook for 10 minutes at high pressure.
- Quick-release pressure.
- Remove the steamer basket and the eggs from the pot. Place the eggs into a bowl of ice-cold water for 5 minutes. Peel the eggs.
- Optional step: at this point, you can fry the eggs in a pan on the stovetop to give the eggs a bit more flavor and color. To do this, heat 1 tablespoon of oil in a pan, add the eggs, and sprinkle a pinch of paprika, cayenne, turmeric, and salt on the eggs.
- Place the peeled eggs back into the cooked rice and mix well. Garnish with cilantro, mint, and ghee-coated cashews and raisins if using.
Video
Notes
- To make the optional ghee-coated cashews and raisins, melt 2 tablespoons of ghee in a pan over low-medium heat on the stovetop. Add ⅓ cup of halved cashews and 2 tablespoons of golden raisins to the pan and stir-fry until the cashews begin to turn golden.
- You can also scramble an egg and add it to the rice for more protein/egg flavor if you’d like! I would do this in a separate pan and then add it to the rice at the end.
- Most Indians grow up knowing to eat around the whole spices once a dish is served, however if you or your guests are not used to this, you can remove them prior to serving.
- I absolutely love this brand of basmati rice – it is very different (in my opinion) than other brands of basmati rice.
Judy says
Tried to make this but got the dreaded “Food Burn” . Not sure if it was because I used a vegetable steamer for the eggs or something else. Any suggestions. Followed the recipe as mentioned above. Carried on cooking the rice and the eggs separately in a pan, it was delicious.
Saranya Senthil says
Could you please tell ratio of rice and water?
Amy Sams says
I love your cookbook and this site. Never has anything not been absolutely delicious. My only wish is that there was some indication on your recipes about how much this will make (portion size and servings) and an automatic note about doubling (Do I double certain things? Leave spices the same?) I now know from experience on the recipes I have tried before but for example I want to make this tonight and am trying to figure out if I need to double for a family of 6? I know from experience in other recipes that with 3 teens the answer is yes but now what doubles and what stays the same?
Ashley - My Heart Beets says
Amy, thanks for the feedback! I’ll work on updating recipe portion sizes – but truthfully, this one is tough for me because people seem to eat such different portions, so I’m really just guessing. I also haven’t doubled all recipes, so I don’t know if they will work just as well. For this recipe, you can always cook more eggs for extra protein – I do this often and know it works. I’m sure it’d also be fine to double the rice too.
Barbara Greenspon says
I have a question that might be weird. I am going to make this recipe, but: does one wash the eggs before placing in the pot? I have read that one shouldn’t wash eggs before cracking them open, but what if they are going into the pot like this? I assume they are not “clean”??
Thanks for help. We love every single recipe we’ve tried from your site, and we’ve tried lots!!!
Barbara
Beth W says
This is so delicious!! Kids and grandparents both loved this biryani!
Ashley - My Heart Beets says
Beth, so happy to hear that! Thanks for letting me know how much they loved it 🙂