The Benefits of Indian Home Cooking, from Saakshi's Kitchen

The benefit of Indian home cooking is not one thing — it is method, ingredients, repertoire and routine, and together they give you food you can eat on an ordinary Wednesday without making an occasion of it. Here is what "home-cooked" actually changes, set out plainly enough that you could check every line of it in our kitchen.

What does "home-cooked" actually mean?

It means the masala is built for the dish, in the pan, every batch — rather than ladled out of one standing base gravy. That is the single technical difference between a home kitchen and a restaurant kitchen, and almost everything else follows from it.

A curry house works from a master sauce made in bulk and finished at the pass with chilli, tomato, cream and sugar. It has to: forty covers in an hour leaves no time to start an onion masala from cold. A home kitchen has no pass and no rush, so it starts each dish from onion, tomato, ginger and garlic and bhunos it until the oil separates.

Why does the masala matter so much?

Because it is where the flavour of an Indian dish is decided. Onions cooked for eight minutes and onions cooked for twenty-five give you two different dishes with the same ingredient list. Bhuno-ing — frying the masala down until the oil separates out at the edges — is the step a busy kitchen shortens first and a home kitchen never does.

The tadka does the other half. Ghee heated until it shimmers, jeera in, sometimes hing and a dried red chilli, and the whole thing poured over the dal at the last moment. It is the sound and smell most Indian households associate with dinner being nearly ready.

What is actually in it?

An ingredient list you could read out to your mum: haldi, jeera, dhania, rai, hing, ajwain and methi in the spice tin; dal, atta, rice and ghee in the cupboard. No pre-made gravy base and no food colouring in our kitchen.

Every dish carries its full ingredient list and allergen information on its product page. We cook in one kitchen where wheat, dairy, mustard and sesame are all in use, so we cannot guarantee any dish is completely free from a given allergen. Read the label properly if anyone at your table has an allergy.

Is it food you can eat every day?

That is the whole point of it. Restaurant Indian is celebration food. Ghar ka khana is Tuesday night. The everyday Indian repertoire — dal, rajma, chole, kadhi, a sabzi, rice or roti — exists precisely because somebody had to put dinner on the table three hundred and sixty-five times a year.

It is also portioned that way. A complete meal is sabzi, dal and roti or rice, sized as one person's dinner rather than as a sharing platter that three people pick at.

How hot is it?

Milder than a restaurant curry. Home cooking is spiced rather than hot: haldi, jeera, dhania, ginger and garlic carry the flavour, and chilli is a choice rather than a default. If you have been avoiding Indian food because you assume it burns, this is the version you have not tried.

For the same reason it works for a mixed table. The pot that feeds a nine-year-old also feeds a grandparent, which is exactly how it is cooked at home.

Does it taste the same every time?

Yes — the same recipes, from one family kitchen, cooked by the same hands. These are family recipes, passed down and cooked the way our family cooks them. It is not a different kitchen every night depending on which one is open, and it is not a menu assembled to cover every region of India at once. It is regional Punjabi home cooking, which is what we know.

79% of our orders come from families who order again. That number is the closest thing we have to proof that consistency is the benefit people actually buy.

What does it do to your week?

It takes the whole chain out: deciding, shopping, chopping, cooking, and the pan afterwards. Meals arrive individually portioned and frozen, so the freezer is already sorted and dinner is a decision you made last week rather than one you have to make at half past five.

Where is it cooked, and where can it go?

Saakshi's Kitchen cooks in our FSA 5-star kitchen, in a kitchen holding a 5-star rating on the FSA food hygiene register. Meals are frozen and delivered to your door across UK mainland. Some areas we can't reach, so check your postcode first.

Keep it in the freezer until you want it. Cook or reheat straight from frozen, following the pack instructions, until piping hot. Don't refreeze once defrosted; if something has defrosted, eat it within 24 hours and reheat it once only.

See this week's menu and build a box →
Check delivery to your postcode →
New to tiffin? Read the full guide →