Changing how consumers view cooking

Those of you who have watched the Malayalam movie, The Great Indian Kitchen, will see the most traditional interpretation of cooking: a drudgery! The film depicts the slave-like life of a smart Dubai-educated Malayalee girl when she gets married in a conservative traditional family living in Kerala heartland. While she adopts the role of a homemaker/cook, giving up aspirations of becoming a dance teacher, what’s in store gets her to take a relook at life in general.

Food needs to be cooked the way it always has been. Rice cannot be made in a pressure cooker (Jo Biwi Se Kare Pyaar, goes out of the window). Some items have to be cooked on a wood stove (Government of India’s LPG scheme is of no avail here). She gets so frustrated with the multiple demands of her husband and her even more obtuse father-in-law, (spoiler alert) she serves dishwater as tea and scoots. A new cook aka bride is found in double-quick time. Our original slave finds salvation as a dance instructor.

If that is one end of the cooking drudgery, let me present another scenario. Mobile services brand Airtel had an ad a few years ago, which shows a woman boss admonishing her subordinates on a job they had not executed: “Sorry guys, this has to be done!” As the office winds down in the evening, she pops by the subordinate’s office to ask how things are going; and also tells him that she is heading home. At home you see that she has changed into comfortable clothes and is enjoying cooking up a storm. The ad then reveals that she is also the wife of the poor chap slaving in the office. The ad demonstrated the speed of mobile video calling while at the same time making a comment on the rise of educated women in the Indian corporate world. Unfortunately, this ad got trolled. The trollers accused the brand and the ad-maker of gender stereotyping; Why should the woman do the cooking, was the argument. Were they right?

Cooking is a chore and a drudgery to many. But in the case of the Airtel film, cooking is presented as a fun activity. Something that is almost cathartic in its effect. The lady boss is enjoying the process of cooking. If you think this is farfetched, you are wrong. A number of couples enjoy the process of cooking together. And this has become a bigger trend in the last two years, during the pandemic.

Kitchen was mostly the domain of the woman in India. But this is set to change. In the US, in almost 40 per cent of the homes, it is the male of the household who is doing the cooking. As I talk at B-schools, I find that more than 50 per cent of the boys know how to cook, at least most of the basic dishes. What has happened?

For one, cooking has got a big boost with the glamorisation of the cooking process. Julia Child, cookery teacher, who died on August 13, 2004, aged 91, changed the way Americans saw cooking. Child’s moment of illumination came in a restaurant in Rouen in 1948. “The meal was simple, but the whole experience,” she later wrote, “was an opening up of the soul and spirit for me.” Under her trilling and exuberant guidance, Americans came to embrace at least the cooking of France, writes the Economist (June 28, 2004). Child was determined to show that French cooking could be fun. Her eruption on television, in 1962, made the point superbly.

If it was Julia Child who made cooking and experimenting with dishes more approachable (check out the movie Julie & Julia), in India too chefs are no small celebrities. In the past, Tamil girls were gifted the book, Samaithu Paar (Cook & See), by Parvathy Ammal; in the rest of India it was Tarla Dalal’s book that went as part of the trousseau. Incidentally, she was the first ‘chef’ or ‘cook book author’ to be awarded the Padma Shri. Then came the Master Chef invasion. Cookery shows became entertainment. This probably spurred a number of young boys and girls to experiment with cooking.

Molecular gastronomy is the scientific discipline concerned with the physical and chemical transformations that occur during cooking. Krish Ashok’s eminently readable book, Masala Lab —  Science of Indian Cooking, deconstructs the myriad flavours of Indian food through the molecular gastronomy lens.

When the lockdown was announced in March 2020, Amul was first off the block to launch its Live Recipe Show. Knowing that consumers were homebound, looking for ideas to cook new dishes, it roped in chefs, food influencers and offered 800 live demos from 2,000 chefs. These live cookery demonstrations, each lasting upwards of 40 minutes, reached over 600 million global audiences through Facebook. And it was done without any significant marketing budget.

During the pandemic, with kids locked up, moms and dads learnt how to cook up new dishes watching shows like the Amul Live Recipe. On a parallel path, ready-to-cook and ready-to-eat brands have never had it so good. Even smaller brands like Weikfield have started spreading the good word about family cooking together.

There is an old adage: “A family that eats together, stays together.” Maybe it is time for us to adopt a new one: “A family that cooks together, stays together.”

The writer is an independent brand coach and a best-selling author. His latest book is Spring – Bouncing Back From Rejection. He can be reached at ambimgp@brand-building.com