Duck Roast, Fish Curry – Tapioca ‘Puzukku’, Cabbage ‘Thoran’, Wheat ‘Paysam’… Kerala’s growing market for home-style, ready-to-eat food

How quickly can you put together a hot meal of rice, sambhar and ka? Avial, together with pulley and soft mango pickle, and finished gothambu (wheat) and paripu (Lentils) Payasam? Give yourself 5 minutes.

When Kochi-based Tasty Nibbles Products launched a ready-to-eat Onasadya kit for Onam with this menu, it sold out in a matter of days. Customers simply needed to pick these up from a supermarket shelf, open vacuum-sealed pouches or cans, and reheat the food, so these products are becoming increasingly popular with time-hungry customers who crave the familiar food. .

Joseph Alappat of Kochi, Heat Eats, says, “Malayalees still prefer home-cooked food. what is better than stupid Microwave dinner version.

While there is a huge variety of ready-to-cook foods to choose from, be it biryani, dal makhani, noodles, pasta and even chicken kebabs, typical, ready-to-eat Kerala food remains a niche. But it is a fast growing market. To people like Joseph and Cherian Kurien, managing directors of HIC-ABF Special Foods Pvt Ltd, of which Tasty Nibbles is a part. While Joseph is a recent foray into the region, Tasty Nibbles has been making packaged Kerala food for over eight years.

Cherian’s experience comes from his years in the packaged and frozen food business. The industry veteran started his company in 2001 and exports seafood, mainly tuna, to Japan. Delicious nibbles started with tuna, anchovy and sardine-based items like Pisces Pira (fish in pickled, shredded coconut) as well as a variety of traditional rice dishes including kappa-puzukku (tapioca), sambar, avial and from about eight years ago tomato rice, coconut rice and casserole.

Earlier this year they exported around 3600 packs of fish biryani to Japan, where it was enthusiastically received. Since a large part of the company’s exports go to Japan, Cherian says he has access to cutting-edge technology in the business and is training technicians there.

Tasty Nibbles added varieties of fish curry in January this year – in coconut milk, shapile (toddy shop) curry, with chilli, prawn mango curry – and the response has been enthusiastic.

gradual increase

Reaching the point where 1,000 Onam kits priced at Rs 999 flew off the shelves has not been without its share of disappointments. “When we launched some of these products eight years ago, the response was not encouraging, we could have been ahead of our time. Today, however, it is very different,” Cherian says.

He says that with more women in the workforce, there is little time to cook elaborate meals and ready-to-eat meals are an advantage. Depression also comes into play, especially with more people – younger, working people and students – living alone and away from home. Targeting the home ailing Malayalees, their products have been rolled out in cities like Chennai, Bengaluru, Mumbai and Delhi. These are also available online. Bangalore and Chennai are the two cities where the products sell the most.

Kochi-based Heat Eats and Courage has also jumped into the fray. Started eight months ago, Joseph Alpat’s Heat Eats is an offshoot of his food start-up, Stellar Creations, a caterer of continental cuisine. Recipes for Chicken Stew, Pork Pepper, Rabbit Roast, Fish Molly in addition to vegetarian food like Pineapple police officercabbage pylon, uli thialAnd eriserie All family dishes.

Dishes are vacuum packed and last for six months or more if stored properly. “No preservatives are added and if frozen, remains spoiled. The quality and nutritional content remains intact,” says Joseph, who adds that he has a mindset on how frozen and packaged food is perceived. The food is blast-chilled, vacuum-packed in pouches and frozen. For now, Heat Eats delivers only in Kochi, where it has to open a counter at Honey Pot, a cafe on Thrikkakara-Pipeline Road. Orders have gone up significantly for NRIs, with a major chunk of their customers taking these pouches back with them; expanding to other cities in Kerala is part of their plans.

a bite of nostalgia

Unlike Delicious Nibbles and Heat Eats, which package ready-to-eat or heat-and-eat meals, package gravy for chicken, beef, egg, shrimp and duck roast, chicken curry and more. Manu Martin says he launched Curaze in April 2022 in an effort to capture the authentic taste of his grandmother’s cooking.

Variety of Frozen Kerala Fare by Heat Eats | photo credit: Tulsi Kakti

For example, his grandmother’s duck roast recipe is a three-hour process, “yet the flavor isn’t guaranteed. But with our gravy, it reduces the cooking time and keeps the flavor consistent,” says Manu. Their factory at Industrial Estate in Kalamassery packages up to 3000 packs per day and has a capacity of 7500. Currease is available online pan India, apart from being sold in stores in Kerala.

Tasty Nibbles and Curries both use retort packaging technology, where food is packaged at a temperature of 121°C and then rapidly cooled (no need to be frozen). The high temperature sterilizes the food, and the principle is similar to that of pressure cooking. “Beauty requires no refrigeration, no preservatives because it is vaccinated packaging. The pre-cooked food goes into the pouch and then into the retort machine or autoclave. Most of the cooking work happens inside the pouch,” says Cherian. The autoclave sterilizes the food after it is packed.

When protein breakdown and loss of flavor are usually a concern when food is heated to high temperatures, Manu says, “As retort technology has evolved, it is no longer the case.”

Homemade ready-to-eat or hot and ready-to-eat food has been longed for among those living outside the state, but the reason for its popularity in Kerala, as Cherian noted, is that large numbers of people stay away. His house in Kerala. “And housewives who may not feel like cooking. It’s convenient, as our tagline says – pop it, warm it, eat it!”