Is the online food ordering trend influencing the way parents cook?

Access to the Internet, travel and the rise of online food ordering have inspired Indian parents to add value to what they cook for the family. And they are constantly in search of a new, healthy menu for their children.

By Chef Mukesh Rawat

The growing popularity of ordering food online has impacted how Indian homes are cooking these days. Due to the ease of placing orders, a love for experimenting with new dishes along with a higher disposable income, millennials are indulging in online food ordering. And keeping pace with this, parents are too changing their cooking styles so that their offspring do not opt for online food orders every now and then. They are watching YouTube recipe videos, learning about new recipes from magazines and hugely applying their acquired, reinvigorated cooking skills.

A 2018 report says that this sector grew at 15 per cent quarter-on-quarter from Jan-Sep 2017. In that, average daily orders grew to 400,000 in the three months to Sep 2017. Also, home deliveries accounted for 56 per cent of all orders in the Sep quarter. If this wasn’t enough, food delivery time has reduced to 42 minutes in Q3 FY17 vs 47 minutes in Q4 FY16. These combined factors have been giving a strong impetus to the trend in India.

Modern kitchen and gadgets

There is a huge change that has happened in the Indian kitchen. Appliances such as OTGs, electronic blenders and roti makers have made inroads into the Indian style of cooking. Also, there is a new kind of recipes that parents are making for the liking of their children. A South Indian kitchen now prepares chole bhature for an elaborate breakfast during a weekend. Because today there is a lot of ease when it comes to accessing a food video and recipe online and parents are using these platforms to try out new recipes. For example, ‘how to make a cake’ is among the top five searches if you explore the how-to tag on YouTube India. The objective is to make a new menu or present it in a style that attracts the younger generation.

Variety of food

Like mentioned earlier, these days, an Indian family does not restrict the menu to traditional dishes only. They look for something new to include in the menu. For example, a non-vegetarian family includes sausages, scrambled eggs along with toast, etc to follow a classic English breakfast menu. Likewise, the cooking method has also undergone change. Deep-fried food items have almost been abandoned by today’s parents as they try to incorporate healthy cooking styles. The impact is such that, some urban families even go beyond South Indian or North Indian dishes and try Thai, Burmese, Japanese, Mexican, even Ethiopian cuisines. The probability is that within a few years, with the help of smartphones and the Internet, Mexican, Japanese cuisines might be considered as Ghar Ka Khana, when prepared at home.

Inclusion of olive oil

Indian urban homes have started adopting olive oils in making their food items. The whole concept of including olive oil in the Indian food recipes have been inculcated to make it a healthier delicacy. Specifically, digital savvy urban Indians, being well-travelled too, along with growing health-conscious mindsets have an increasing tendency of adopting MUFA (monounsaturated fatty acids) which come in a variety of cooking oils including olive oil, rice bran oil, canola oil, mustard oil, and groundnut oil. As per a report published on Olive Oil Times, MUFAs lower the death rate from several heart diseases and lowers the cholesterol level as well. Olive oil, with its antioxidant components, is very useful in lowering joint pains. Further, olive oil is also very helpful in reducing the risk of Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

In a nutshell, access to the Internet, travel to international destinations along with the rise of online food ordering have inspired Indian parents to add value to what they cook for the family. And they are constantly in search of a new, healthy menu to attract their children.

(The writer is an Executive Pastry Chef in Academy of Pastry Art India.)

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