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Cooking Made Easy with New-Age Ingredients

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The new league of chefs is increasingly opting for the new-age ingredients that are easy-to-cook, easy-to-use, and come in ready-made packs. These ingredients facilitate faster and consistent cooking. In comparison, the age-old techniques of cutting, grinding, pounding, etc, to reach the right consistency require a lot of (manual) effort, are time consuming, and there is wastage as the exact quantity required cannot be determined at the outset.

From stand-alone restaurants, cafe chains and pubs to star hotels, chefs across all formats are using the new ingredients to enhance their dishes, save cooking time, and minimise wastage. These easy-to-use ingredients also leave them time to experiment with different cuisines, innovate with food styling and presentation, and employ their culinary skills to create new dishes and fusions.

Suppliers have also evolved to offer quick cooking solutions with their curry pastes, bakery pre-mixes, spices and sauces. According to Harbir S Jolly, Manager – Operations, Leisure Zone Cafe, “One of the biggest advantages of using these convenience driven ingredients is that they help in saving considerable manpower costs. For instance, ready-to-use, flavoured mayonnaise can be used for making dips, dressings, toppings and spreads. A chef can easily tweak the flavour when required.”

He adds, “These instant products are a very effective remedy for maintaining standardisation in case of a centralised kitchen that feeds satellite kitchens, and for restaurant chains across geographies.”

Advancements in food and packaging technology have made it possible to extend the shelf-life of these products, while retaining their taste and flavour, which further impacts the restaurant’s cost and quality of cooking. Some chefs in prominent hotels and restaurants discuss the new cooking ingredients that are enhancing food preparation time and techniques, minimising stock-outs, reducing wastage, and saving costs in their kitchens.

Anurag Mathur, Executive Chef, Jaypee Vasant Continental, Delhi

The list of latest cooking ingredients is endless. There is panko bread crumbs, chicken broth powder, Thai curry pastes, chocolate whip toppings, seasoning powders for French fries and popcorns (in flavours like Jamaican jerk, green chilli, oregano, etc), brown sliced onions, and many, many more.

We use international ingredients brands such as Namjai, Knorr and Indian brands such as Funfood, and Custom Culinary. These ingredients are cost effective too. In fact, wastages are easily controlled as the chef will use a particular quantity for batch cooking.

Dharmesh Karmokar, Chef and Creative Brand Head, Nom Nom, Delhi

We are experimenting with local and few imported ingredients such as abalone, garlic leaves/grass, wine leaves, homemade cheese, sua bhajji, black cod, and yellow fin tuna. We use products offered by various brands such as Colavita pasta and extra virgin olive oil, Colavita Dal 1912 – penne, Impero mascarpone cheese, Kikkoman soy sauce, Hutesa – olives, La padriza – capers and De nigris balsamic.

Dheeraj Mathur, Indyaki, Radisson Blu Hotel, New Delhi, Paschim Vihar

I use flavoured cheese such as blu cheese and scarmoza cheese to add flavour to kebabs, and herbs such as kaffir lime, lemon grass, basil and thyme to add an oriental flavour to Indian dishes like tomato basil shorba, dal aur nimbu ka shorba, kaffir lime murgh tikka, and thyme macchi tikka. There are some very commonly used ready-made spice mixes such as peri peri, sumak (Arabic spice), kasundi paste, wasabi paste, and chundoo (sweet mango pickle). Kissan tomato puree, Mother’s Recipe pickles, Monin crushes, Sensa Fruit Puree are some of the brands that we are using. Some ingredients are also used in for making the food more colourful and presentable, for instance, tri-colour bell peppers in kadhai paneer make the dish very colourful; similarly we have dishes such as zucchini mussalam, broccoli and asparagus subzi.

Sudhir Pai, Executive Chef, Holiday Inn, Mumbai International Airport & Treasurer, Western India Culinary Association (WICA)

Today, there are a host of ready-to-cook and ready-to-use ingredients that aid in cooking such as Indian base/ masala for preparing gravies, ready-to-use demi glace powder, seasoning powders (chicken and veg), potato flakes, coconut milk powder, frozen egg /egg white, spice blends such as Cajun powder, Jamaican jerk spices, barbecue seasonings and Vx2t bread stabiliser.

Ready-to-eat or easy-to-cook frozen snacks such as nuggets, cheese poppers, potato poppers, fish fingers and dimsums have also become popular among customers and are a great help in case of large orders. Knorr, Best Foods, Maggie, Calpro, Bush and Aldia are some of the brands that we use in our kitchen.

Kedar Bobde, Executive Chef, Hyatt Regency, Mumbai & Member of WICA

Ready-to-use ingredients such as pastry glaze, and gluten to enrich breads have become quite popular. When we talk of latest ingredients, they also include various imported meats such as Guanciale, Culatello and a variety of seafoods.

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