Drop by Futuristic Labs' Test Kitchen in Hyderabad and you might think you’ve stepped onto the set of a cooking show. While the chaos is more controlled, and the ingredients are way less bizarre, the hustle and bustle look a lot like what you see on TV. The employees here aren’t cooking for prize money, but the stakes are still pretty high. They have to come up with recipes that our users are inspired to make at home - and that they’ll love enough to make on our cookware range.
The Recipe for Creating a Culinary Team
A full-time chef along with the subject matter expert, overseen by our CEO - Goutham Gandhi Nadendla, are the ones who make it happen. Our culinary team has worked in different food service establishments before joining the test kitchen - an experience that surprisingly doesn’t always come in handy. In a restaurant, you make everything in big batches, often using complicated techniques. Here, we try to keep things manageable because our focus is on guided recipes to feed a family of four. Each recipe goes through multiple rounds of testing. The team will remake a dish 10 times if necessary. It’s a lot of work, but this is the only way they can make sure that everyone - regardless of their cooking skill - will be able to succeed with each recipe.
Guidelines to Follow During Recipe Testing
REQUIRED READING: When employees need inspiration, they turn to the kitchen’s library of more than 5,000 books—including offbeat titles like Cooking for Geeks! and Kitchen Mysteries.
SPICE STASH: A key part of the testing process is checking the flavor-super spicy dishes that won’t appeal to most users. A balance is key and that’s what we strive for, and ensure that we have room for adjustments based on user preferences.
WASTE NOT: The culinary team ensures that the tested food never goes waste. All food scraps go into a small dustbin, collected several times a day. The kitchen tries to follow a zero-waste approach.
IN THE PANTRY: A few recipes might require specialty ingredients, but we try to stick to items found in most supermarkets and ensure that the fridge is stocked up with fresh produce.
TIME TO TASTE: The kitchen holds several tastings a day for other teams to share their feedback and crowd-source solutions for tricky recipes.
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