Dum Pukht

Dum pukht is an Indo-Persian slow-cooking technique in which meat and vegetables are cooked together over a low flame inside a heavy clay pot, called a handi, whose lid is sealed shut with a ring of dough so no steam or aroma can escape during cooking. The name comes from Persian, combining dum, keeping food over a slow, low fire, and pukht, the act of cooking, and the technique first developed in the kitchens of the Mughal Empire, becoming especially associated with the Awadh region of pre-partition India; tradition credits its adoption to the eighteenth-century ruler Nawab Asaf-ud-Daulah, whose kitchens are said to have noticed the appealing aroma from sealed cooking pots used to feed workers during a famine-relief building project. The method combines an initial roasting step, called bhunao, with the long, sealed simmer, or dum itself, which can run as long as twenty-four hours and lets the dish's herbs and spices release their flavor fully while the food's own juices and aromas stay contained inside the sealed pot.