Frozen delights

The craving for desi khana in the lands beyond has given birth to a thriving frozen food industry in the US, reports Pratik Khatri 

Joyita Mukherjee is just back from work and it is already time for dinner. It has been a long day and she is left with little energy to cook. This, however, does not leave her feeling hassled; she just opens her refrigerator and brings out the saviour—-a packet of frozen naan, that she will serve with a helping of heat-and-eat palak paneer. This investment specialist working with Prudential Financial at Hartford does this often, flipping the dining table into any foodie’s dream at the click of a finger. And her freezer is nearly her virtual rasoi.

For those who love Indian food but do not have the time or skill to dish out sumptuous recipes, the frozen food isle of desi stores here has become the answer. Ranging from snacks like kachoris and samosas, to meals like aaloo-poorie, butter chicken, stuffed kulchas, naans and paranthas—-nothing is out of reach. These heat-and-eat options have successfully targeted the Indians living abroad, who search for an instant taste of home, with a flavour that does justice to the taste buds the Indian way.

The freezer comes in as a happy option for nearly all—-working women, bachelors, home-makers—-who don’t feel like cooking every once in a while. And then there are the hapless students, on a shoe-string budget, who crave for the frozen Indian delicacies. Tushar Chowdhary, an engineering student at Kingswille, Texas, illuminates: “After family it’s the food that I miss the most about Delhi. The taste of frozen desi khaana is not an exact match, but comes as close as it could get in pardes. Students like me can’t afford to frequent Indian restaurants because of budget constraints; so the frozen food option fills the void. It’s convenient as well. I can use the packet in portions, thus avoiding wastage.”

The stacks of frozen food in Indian grocery stores disappear more quickly than one would imagine. Aashita Mehta, an expecting mother in Connecticut, laments that it often happens that the desi store runs out on the stock of frozen samosas. The Punjabi samosas seem to be an all-time favourite with most of the frozen food fanatics. “Though I know how to prepare samosas from scratch at home, it involves too much time and labour, and the taste is not nearly as good as the bazaar option. The frozen samosas make for an excellent snack to be served at parties, especially when the gathering is all-Indian. It is no fuss and all taste”, says Swati Gupta, a home-maker in Groton, Connecticut, who loves to entertain but needs to economise on time as she is constantly attending to her two-year old daughter.

Swati puts the frozen food option to another clever use. For parties where her guest list gets a little too long, she prepares the curries at home but uses frozen kulchas to go with them. This saves her a great deal of worry and, thus, she is able to expand her menu to include a lot more dishes than she could otherwise manage, and earns kudos from her guests.

And surprisingly it is not just Indians who are diehard fans of frozen Indian food. There are some Americans who pick up the Indian palate as ardently. Kuldip Khatri, a software engineer in California, recalls: “This one time an American lady was struggling real hard to explain to an Indian grocery store attendant that she was looking for Peshawari naan. She went on explaining that she wanted the Indian flat bread with cashews and raisins. Apparently, she had tried it at one of the Indian restaurants and got hooked to the taste”.

Coming to the variety available, the count just goes on. Deep Foods is a known-to-all, to-be-found-everywhere brand which markets virtually every imaginable Indian dish that has any scope to be frozen. Since its inception in 1977, Deep Foods has taken the cuisine of India to the international food isles of the regular grocery stores as well. Then there is the Pillsbury option for Indian flat breads, or Laxmi and Swad—-the brands more known for chapati flour but making its own space in the freezers with mini kachoris, tandoori rotis and paranthas of all kind. And nearly each of the Indian grocery stores has some home-made-packed-and-frozen items of their own. They mainly dole out frozen chapatis, pre-fried paneer cubes and regional delicacies like dhokla and thepla.

So much so about the blessings of frozen food. However, there are the sceptics. Some people would rather forego the pleasure of heeding to their taste buds’ nudging than fall for the charm of frozen khaana. A major concern is the health aspect. Amit Salunkhe, an Infosys employee working in New London, Connecticut, observes: “Most of the Indian frozen food items don’t have an expiry date mentioned anywhere on the packaging. This, coupled with the fact that the FDA does not strictly regulate these food items, makes me doubtful about the quality control aspect. Then there are some logistical undesirables. For instance, small Indian grocery stores sometimes are not very particular about the cold storage conditions, and a variation in temperature caused by frequent switching on and off may lead to thawing and refreezing of the food items, and thus affecting its shelf life.”

As it is frozen food, it can never compete with fresh preparations, but the very fact that it is frozen makes sure it was preserved the right way. It regains the freshness considerably once you heat it. — TWF