Indian Spice Kitchen

Yumbles seller Sanjay Aggarwal may be the president of Spice Kitchen UK – an innovative family business that is shaking-up the spruce scene within the united kingdom. We trapped with Sanjay for more information about their company – just in time for nationwide Curry Week!

How and in which performed Spice Kitchen get going?

Spice Kitchen was born across kitchen table and continues to be greatly a kitchen table business. The idea came into being because i needed a way to hold my mum, Shashi, busy in her own pension. My mum has long been referred to as best cook in our household (we’ve got a big extended category of about 200 members) – the woman style for Indian meals is amazing. She’s got an excellent palate – she truly understands herbs and family parties have actually constantly revolved around my mum and her meals!

Professionals like Dhruv Baker and Anjali Patak rave about your herbs – what makes them therefore unique?

With Indian food, every thing precipitates into top-notch the spices. That’s exactly what my mum features always taught me personally and my cousin and sister, and it also in fact is so real. So the very first essential difference could be the quality of our herbs – all whole herbs we get are really, extremely fresh. We buy in tiny quantities – unlike the supermarkets that are handling massive volumes at a time.

What sort of spices tend to be treated and handled is truly important also. We hand-grind and roast our herbs ourselves, and happy to own two really special tools at our disposal. To start with, we’ve got a huge stone pestle and mortar that’s been in our house about 90 many years. We’ve additionally got an antique grain grinder that’s been our house a long time too. They don’t replace the taste regarding the herbs or heat all of them as they’re surface, and because everything is carried out in little batches and packed in airtight bins after milling, they remain very fresh. In all honesty it’s very difficult for an idea of exactly what our product is similar to before you see and smell the spices – they simply smell completely different as to the you get inside shops.

Will there be one product which stands apart through the remainder in your range?

We’re specifically proud of our curry makes – the grade of curry leaves you will get in britain is generally really poor. The curry or neem tree (Murraya koenigii) is a sub tropical tree indigenous to Indian and Sri Lanka, also it’s very hard to grow over here. But we still have family over in Kenya and they grow curry leaves in their yard – here’s a photo of my cousin following he sliced down a branch off the tree for people!

Reveal a bit more concerning the history towards business – what’s it like working with your mum and dad?

I’ve recently got married and moved up north with my partner, while my Mum and father live-in Birmingham. So in a funny method, Spice Kitchen has had united states closer collectively while physically we’re further aside. It’s a brilliant company, we've lots of fun with it. Mum and father manage most of the manufacturing and processing aspect, and I care for everything online. So that it’s a real family members business and it works really well.

Think about your larger family – have they been supportive too?

We performedn’t truly tell anyone inside our prolonged family what we were performing when we started Spice Kitchen, but they found out simply because they found us on social networking when things took off. We’ve had plenty support since that time though; everyone says that if anyone was going to take action like this and then make profitable from it, it would be my mum because she’s such an incredible prepare.

My spouse has really dropped deeply in love with my mum’s cooking – whenever we got to Birmingham my mum will ask what she wants to eat and she always says “Masala Dosa”. it is really opened her eyes with regards to what real Indian cooking is like! That’s my mum training my spouse the skill of chapati making when you look at the picture above. I’m the attractive young boy to the left, after that on right you can see the antique wheat grinder we use, and a picture of my cousin grinding herbs in our pestle and mortar 25 years ago.

Just what have been your proudest moments since starting Spice Kitchen?

from the comfort of time one, we’ve been impressed by not only by the amount of people whom seem to be purchasing Indian herbs on the web, nevertheless comments we’ve had from customers. Lots will buy the spice tins initially, then keep returning to us when it comes to re-fills.That’s been our powerful motivator truly – we had been never really out to make money, Spice Kitchen was only an idea maintain my mum busy! But our customers love everything we achieve this that’s exactly what keeps united states motivated and keeps united states going.