Fairuza Akhtar, a restaurant owner in Jackson Heights, Queens, who was born in Pakistan, has developed a quick method for making fragrant, creamy biriyani with whole spices and bites of chicken, at home in her rice cooker. "My mother would fall down in a faint," she said, referring to the traditionally reverent attitude toward biriyanis in Northern India and Pakistan. "But rice cookers are the way of the modern world."

Featured in: The Steamy Way To Dinner.