Pilau (noun.) Pilaf or pilau rice is the main course dish commonly found in South Asia, West Asia, East Africa, Balkans, Central Asia and the Caribbean. The basic format of preparing Pilau involves cooking rice with vegetables and meat.
Pilaf includes a broth of rice in which meat and vegetable are added and pilau is a dry version. In India, it is made by sautéing the meat pieces or vegetables and rice in butter or oil, and then cooking all the ingredients in herbs and water.
The dish commonly found in the menus of Indian restaurants is pilau and biriyani. Biriyani is a rice dish made with partially cooked vegetables and meat where the layers of half-cooked rice and half cooked vegetables( or meat/ chicken) are cooked together to get a delicious version of fluffy rice that absorbs the taste of all the herbs( like cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg).
It used in the preparation of the dish. Sindhi, Awadhi, Lucknowi and Hyderabadi biryani versions are some of the most popular versions served by local restaurants in the Indian subcontinent.