Many Iranian dishes are cooked using rice, but the way of cooking them has its own subtleties. Tahchin is one such dish, which in addition to its delicious taste, has a beautiful appearance. The use of the two words “Tah” meaning bottom and end and “Chin” meaning stacking, is because the ingredients used in this dish are stacked layer by layer from the bottom of the dish to the top.

Tahchin, which can be considered a kind of rice cake, is cooked in different ways and all of them use rice, a type of meat, or a vegetable. Among the different types of Tahchin, the one cooked with chicken is the most common and popular.

Ingredients

Rice: four cups

Chicken meat: 800 grams

Onion: a large one

Yogurt: one cup (It is better to use condensed yogurt, which has a mild sour taste)

Ground saffron: two tablespoons

Egg: one

Chicken broth: one cup

Turmeric powder: one teaspoon

Oil, salt, and black pepper: as per taste

Barberry: one cup

Recipe

Soak the rice at least two hours before cooking. Chicken meat should be boneless. In order to improve the taste of the food, it is preferable to use chicken breast meat.

Soak the barberry an hour before cooking so that it gets a better color and becomes softer. Put the saffron together with three or four small pieces of ice in a container one hour before you start cooking and let the ice gradually melt and the saffron gets soaked. If it suits your taste, you can use 50 grams of butter to make the food fatter.

Put the chicken with chopped onion, salt, turmeric powder, two glasses of boiling water, and a tablespoon of oil in a pot and put it on the stove to cook. After the chicken becomes soft, remove it from the heat and keep it aside until the chicken meat cools. If the chicken meat contains bones, you can remove the bones after it has cooled. Chicken meat should be shredded.

Drain the water from the rice that you soaked earlier and put it in a pot of boiling water. Add some salt to it and wait until it is half-cooked. When the rice is half cooked, drain it and wash it with cold water.

Mix the yogurt, soaked saffron, salt, pepper, and a tablespoon of oil in a bowl. Take a quarter of it and put it aside, add the eggs to the rest, and continue stirring. If you want your food to get more color and taste of saffron, you can add saffron to the mixture along with eggs.

It is now time to steam the rice: pour a tablespoon of oil on the bottom of the pot. Combine two cups of rice with half of the egg mixture and spread it on the bottom of the pot to form the first layer of food. For the second layer, mix half of the shredded meat with the other half of the yogurt and egg mixture and spread on the first layer.

The third layer is made by mixing and spreading the rest of the shredded chicken and the rest of the rice. Finally, combine a cup of chicken broth with a quarter of the yogurt mixture that you left aside, and sprinkle it on the surface of the rice. In order for the Tahchin mixture to stick together well, gently press the surface of the rice with a skimmer.

If you want to add butter to your food, you should cut it into pieces and put it on top of the rice so that it melts while the rice is being steamed.

Cover the pot and steam the food for 1.5 to two hours. When the sides of the food become golden brown and the rice is completely soft, it is time to serve the food.

Tahchin is also cooked in the oven. To do this, the oven must be at 400 degrees Fahrenheit and the food must remain on the lowest shelf for 75 minutes. If you want to cook in the oven, cover the pot with foil.

How Is Tahchin Served?

First, drain the barberry juice and fry it together with almond and pistachio slices in a tablespoon of oil. According to your taste, you can add sugar to this mixture. You can fry these ingredients separately and mix them at the end.

Then remove the food from the stove and let it cool a bit. Place a big round dish on top of the pot and turn it upside down so that the food is placed on the dish in one mold and then use barberry mixture and slices to decorate it. Sometimes condensed yogurt is also used to decorate this dish.

Tahchin is usually served along with Sabzi-khordan (a mixture of vegetables that can be eaten raw), pickles, lettuce salad, or Shirazi salad (a type of salad made with chopped cucumber, tomato, and onion and flavored with salt, vinegar, or lemon juice). The lowest part of the food, which becomes darker in color, is called “Tahdig”. This part of the food is the most delicious and very popular among most Iranians.

Tahchin, which can be considered a kind of rice cake, is cooked in different ways and all of them use rice, a type of meat, or a vegetable. Among the different types of Tahchin, the one cooked with chicken is the most common and popular.

Some Iranian dishes and their preparation methods have been inscribed as the intangible national heritage of the country. At the present time, when fast foods and genetically modified ingredients have become popular, some local dishes such as Garmsari Tahchin have retained their authenticity.

Features of Garmsari Tahchin

Tahchin is an Iranian dish that can be described as a rice cake. But Garmsari Tahchin is different from other forms of Tahchin which are common in different parts of Iran in terms of cooking and raw materials. In this dish, raisins are mixed with rice and the meat used in it is fresh meat, i.e. frozen meat or leftover meat totally avoided because they do not give it a good taste. In this dish, mutton and tail fat are usually placed in the heart of the rice so that all the ingredients get cooked simultaneously. Since the meat used in the food has tail fat, no oil is added to Garmsari Tahchin. This ensures the health of the food and eliminates the suspicion of the presence of transgenic materials in it! The people of Garmsar believe that in order for Garmsari Tahchin to have an authentic taste, it must be made in a copper pot.

The longevity of the Garmsari Tahchin, most likely, dates back to the Qajar era (18th century). Of course, as a dish of Iranian origin, which has no equivalent in other countries, Tahchin has been popular since the distant past, but cooking it in the Garmsari way is relatively newer. Garmsari Tahchin is mostly cooked during months of religious ceremonies such as Muharram and Safar or Ramadan.

Ingredients (for Six People)

• Rice: four cups

• Fresh mutton (along with tail fat): 500 grams

• Onions: two

• Brewed saffron: three tablespoons

• Turmeric, sour grapes powder or lemon powder, dried tomato powder, black pepper, cumin powder, and cinnamon: one tablespoon each

• Raisins: half a cup

The best meat for this dish is fresh lamb (along with tail fat), but you can use chicken instead. In this case, it is better to use chicken thighs. Using chicken meat reduces the time required to cook the food and, of course, cooking oil will be needed.

Recipe

• Soak the rice in cold water for at least two hours before cooking.

• The process of preparing the Garmsari Tahchin starts from the night before cooking! In the first step, you have to season the meat. For this, put it in a container and chop the onions and pour on it. After adding the spice, stir it well so that the whole pieces of meat are coated with it. Then put it in a closed container and put it in the refrigerator.

• Fill a pot halfway with water and put it on the stove to boil. After the water boils, drain the water from the rice and pour the rice into the pot. You should let the rice boil in the water for about five minutes until it is almost cooked. Since the brewing stage takes a rather long time, make sure to drain the rice quickly. While draining, you should also make sure that no amount of water is left so that it does not stick together during brewing.

• Put the pot on low heat. If you like, you can pour a little oil on the bottom of the pot. Now cover the bottom of the pot with some slices of bread or potatoes. This part is the “Tahdig” of the dish and it will be very delicious. Of course, in the traditional method, they do not use slices of bread or potatoes for tahdig and pour the rice directly into the pot; it, therefore, depends on one’s taste.

• Pour half of the rice onto the bottom of the pot and then place the meat along with spices and chopped onion on it.

• Dissolve saffron in boiling water and pour two-thirds of it on the rice and meat so that it colors everything.

• Finally, empty the rest of the rice into the pot and leave it to steam on low heat. You can add half a glass of water to the rice to make it brew better. Now you have to wait at least for two hours for the brewing stage to be completed.

While waiting for the steaming to be completed, you can fry the raisins. Fry a chopped onion, add the raisins to it, continue frying for a while, and then add salt, turmeric, and cinnamon powder to it. In the last half hour of cooking, pour raisins and spices on the food along with the rest of the saffron... Yogurt and raw onion are among the most popular accompaniments to Garmsari Tahchin when it is being served.

Tahchin is an Iranian dish that can be described as a rice cake. But Garmsari Tahchin is different from other forms of Tahchin which are common in different parts of Iran in terms of cooking and raw materials.