Here is a 2-minute read on the art and the science behind our 5-minute meals.
The art -
Indian cuisines are inherently suitable for moderate shelf-life. Our dishes use natural ingredients (preventing artificial chemical reactions) and are well cooked (removing all the bacteria), making them a good fit for pre-cooking and later consumption.
To put things in context — Indian cuisines are thousands of years old and Indian kitchens have adapted refrigerators only fairly recently, many still don’t have one. It is easy to see why the art of food preservation would have been a common-place.
With such a head start, all that’s left to do is a little bit of experimentation -
- Choosing the right ingredients
- Perfecting the proportions (and spices)
- Altering the order of steps involved in preparing a dish
- Packaging the right way (vacuum sealed)
Food dehydration is the process of extracting the moisture, thereby inhibiting the growth of microorganisms. Dehydration is one of the oldest methods of food preservation and was used by prehistoric people in sun-drying seeds. Today, with the advent of technology, almost any food can be dehydrated and stored for extended periods of time.
Note: Not all our meals are dehydrated. Some of them are just prepared and packed in air-tight covers and the extended shelf-life is just by design.
However, dehydration is not simple by any means. It involves a few critical steps and takes experimentation to get it right.
Using the right ingredients
- Using the right dehydration method (hot air, vacuum, freeze-dry)
- Using the right dehydration equipment
- Making sure food is heated to right temperatures, for the right amount of time
- Making sure food is at least 95% dehydrated
End of the day, dehydration is not rocket science. But, just like everything else in life, you will have to see it (and taste it) to believe it.