Cooking for Dummies

iChef.in soon plans to ship its cooking kits to other metros and tier II cities

You want to cook a delightful meal for your girlfriend, but you are no masterchef. iChef.in, a recently launched online food service delivers ingredients — measured, diced and sealed — for you to cook a delicious meal. Right from exotic vegetables such as zucchini or water chestnut, to hard-to-find ingredients such as harissa paste and hoisin sauce will be delivered to your doorstep. “iChef is for people who would like to cook gourmet food at home without having to hunt for ingredients or shop for large quantities that may eventually go waste,” says its co-founder Chirag Arya, who is betting on the sudden explosion in India’s food space and the booming e-commerce sector for his venture’s success.

Inspired by a similar concept in the US called Blue Apron, iChef currently delivers across Mumbai, but soon plans to ship to other metros and tier II cities. The website, which went live two weeks ago, lists six recipes including risotto with Spanish-basil pesto and sweet potato, pineapple chicken teriyaki and lamb sliders. The menu will be updated every fortnight. “For the next 15 days, we are planning to include dishes such as spinach and mushroom quiche, cold pasta salads and Vietnamese rolls among others,” says Arya, stressing on the importance of healthier meals.

Encouraged by its prospect, we decided to try out the kits that cost about Rs 250 each and are enough for two people. We picked Thai green curry with jasmine rice and kung pao chicken tacos. All the ingredients including vegetables, sauces and even the rice came in a neat large shopping bag with individual labels — the obsessive compulsive in us was happy. The package came with recipe cards with step-by-step instructions aided by photographs.

Apart from a few misses, the experience was largely satisfactory. For instance, the recipe asked us to dice onions but failed to mention what to do with them. The dishes tasted authentic, especially the Thai curry that was flavourful and the crunch from the water chestnut was a good touch. However, the kung pao chicken in tacos seemed a bit odd, so we polished off the Chinese curry with some rice. Since the recipes are tested and tasted by professional chefs, who also determine the measures of each ingredient, there is very little scope to go very wrong with the dish.

iChef is a promising service that brings gourmet food to your kitchen.

meenakshi.iyer@expressindia.com