Enjoy quick, ready-to-cook favourites with Q49 Flavours' instant paste range

In less than 20 minutes, you will have a fresh, home-cooked meal that uses no preservatives or additives
Q49 Flavours ready-to-cook food
Q49 Flavours ready-to-cook food

Indian cooking requires a range of spices to be slow-cooked, thereby taking a lot of time and effort. This is probably why pre-mix masalas have found space in every kitchen as they reduce the effort of cooking the full meal starting from scratch. And Chennai-based brand Q49 Flavours is adding to the trend with about 10 different mixes already available to order. “Our primary objective is to make cooking a joyful experience even to the ones who are not inclined or do not have the required knowledge to make a tasty dish. I am sure if people are given a viable option to cook a meal at home with very little effort, they would not mind doing it,” says Renu Kurian, founder of Q49 who believes that her readymade food will encourage a healthy lifestyle. Renu tells us that she decided to make a shortcut to Indian dishes via an easy-to-use  paste after her son moved to Montreal, Canada for higher studies. “He was hardly getting any food there and by the end of the first semester, he was missing home food and wanted to learn cooking. He didn’t pick up much so I decided to make ready-to-cook pastes of his favourite dishes,” she recalls.

We tried the Biryani and Sambar packs and they did feel homely. All we had to do was to add veggies to the paste and rice with an adequate amount of water. Same with Sambar — bring required water to boil and add the paste, the authentic sambar will be ready in about 10 minutes. “We have two more products under development and will be adding more,” says Renu as she takes us through the making process and to our surprise mixes are made exactly the way we cook these dishes at home. We are told that only fresh onions, tomatoes, ginger, garlic and herbs are used. “This ensures that our products taste and feel like home.” Once the fresh ingredients are sautéed, the spices are added and further cooked. This paste is then packed into retortable pouches and put through a retort process that endures its shelf life of more than a year without using any additives or preservatives. What’s next? “We hope to introduce new products from different cuisines from around the world using traditional home recipes.”

Related Stories

No stories found.
Indulgexpress
www.indulgexpress.com