Which cut for which dish.

The one rule behind every cut

Muscles that work hard — shank, neck, shoulder, ribs, the front end of the animal generally — are laced with connective tissue. Under long, low, wet heat that tissue dissolves into gelatin, which is what gives a good nihari the body that clings to your lip and a shoulder curry its silky gravy. Rush those cuts and they are simply tough. Muscles that barely work, like undercut and chicken breast, have very little of it, so they are tender straight away and go stringy and dry if you stew them for hours.

So the question is never which cut is best, it is how long you intend to cook. Four hours on the lowest flame calls for collagen. Twenty minutes over a roaring flame calls for something that was already tender when it went in. Almost every disappointing pot of meat comes from getting that match wrong in one direction or the other.

Nihari and paya: shank, shin and the bone

Nihari is a shank dish. Beef shin — bong, with the nalli bone in the middle — is the classic, because the shin is pure working muscle wrapped in silverskin and full of collagen. Six hours on a barely-there flame turns all of that into gelatin, which is why a proper nihari sets to a wobble when it goes cold. A lean piece of undercut in the same pot would simply shred into dry threads by hour two.

Ask for the marrow bone left in and cracked rather than sawn into powder, because the marrow melts out into the gravy and does more for the dish than any amount of extra fat added at the top. Mutton nihari works the same way with goat shank and neck. Paya is a separate purchase entirely — trotters, cleaned and singed, and worth asking the butcher to split for you.

The finishing slurry is atta and water whisked smooth and stirred in near the end. Use a plain wholemeal grade rather than a very fine one; it thickens more gently and is less likely to go gluey if you overshoot.

Karahi: small pieces, bone in, high heat

A karahi is cooked fast and open, so the meat has to be cut small enough to be done before the tomatoes reduce to nothing. For mutton karahi that means chops, ribs and small bone-in shoulder pieces — the bone and the connective tissue around it melt out in thirty to forty-five minutes and give the tomato masala its gloss. Boneless cubes of leg cooked the same way tighten into rubber, because they have neither fat nor collagen to spare.

For chicken karahi, a whole bird cut into twelve to sixteen pieces beats a tray of one cut every time: you get thigh for flavour, drumstick for texture, and bones doing what bones do. Take the skin off, since it will not crisp in a wet masala. If you must use breast, put it in ten minutes after the dark meat and pull the pan off the heat the moment it turns opaque.

Biryani and pulao want different meat

These two dishes get treated as cousins and they are cooked in opposite directions. Biryani is meat cooked in its own thick masala with dahi, then layered with parboiled rice and finished on dum, so the meat and the rice keep separate identities. That wants bone-in shoulder or leg pieces of roughly equal size, so they finish together, marinated in whisked dahi for at least an hour to loosen the fibres. Sella rice is the safer grain here because it survives parboiling and layering without breaking.

Pulao runs the other way. Bony pieces, marrow bones and whole garam masala go into water first to make yakhni; the stock is strained, the meat is browned, and the rice then cooks in that stock and takes all the flavour into the grain. Beef pulao wants shank and ribs for the stock. Mutton pulao wants pieces of raan on the bone plus a few chops. Aged basmati is the right rice for pulao — long grain, low starch, and it drinks stock without turning to paste.

Qeema: it is the fat that makes it

Mince is the one place where asking about the cut matters most, because you cannot see what went into the mincer once it comes out. Shoulder or chuck with roughly a fifth of its weight as fat is the workhorse: enough fat to keep it moist and to carry the masala, not so much that the pan floods. Trimmings and gristle minced together give you grey, watery qeema that never browns properly.

Then match the grind to the dish. One coarse pass suits keema matar and keema karahi, where you want the texture to stay visible. Two fine passes suit seekh kebab, shami and chapli, where the meat has to knead into a paste sticky enough to hold onto a skewer. Chicken qeema should come from thigh, not breast — breast mince is so lean it goes powdery in the pan.

• Nihari, paya: beef shank and bong with the marrow bone, or goat shank and neck.
• Karahi: mutton chops, ribs and small bone-in shoulder; or a whole chicken cut into twelve to sixteen.
• Biryani: even bone-in shoulder or leg, marinated in dahi.
• Pulao: bony pieces and marrow bones for the yakhni, plus raan on the bone.
• Qeema and kebab: shoulder or chuck, minced once for curries and twice for kebab.
• Korma: larger bone-in shoulder pieces, which hold together through a long, slow braise.