Our motto with Spicecraft has always been ‘Keep it good, Keep it simple’
Many of our friends were frustrated by how hard it was to get the right recipes and ingredients for traditional style Indian cooking. Store bought jars and pastes never tasted right, and avoiding preservatives seemed impossible.
So we came up with Spicecraft gourmet Indian meal kits.
Traditional recipes with finest quality ingredients and detailed instructions on how to cook up a delicious feast from scratch. Always authentic and always of the highest quality.
In the begining we started with a wide a range of cooking kits. Infact, the very first version of Spicecraft was called Curry Delights – a monthly subscription service showcasing different flavours from all across the subcontinent every month.
But ultimately people just kept coming back for the Butter Chicken packs.
Clearly our customers had spoken. So we pivoted from the original subscription business into a product business. Now Spicecraft kits focus on just the one delicious classic – Butter Chicken.
Recipe and Ingredients
Butter Chicken was first invented in an Old Delhi restaurant called Moti Mahal 70 years ago. The restaurant was famous for it’s Tandoori Chicken (whole chicken marinated with spices and grilled in a very hot clay oven). Certain cuts of the Tandoori Chicken didn’t sell too well, so the chef came up with a creamy spiced tomato sauce, popped the chicken into it and called it Butter Chicken. The rest as they say is history.
The restaurant is still going strong today. After sampling a lot of Butter Chicken at Moti Mahal and long chats with their chef, we worked out a recipe that captured the flavoursome essence of the original dish while keeping it simple to make.
In the Spice kits you will find that the 13 herbs and spices are split into 4 separate sachets. Each sachet goes in at a different stage when cooking to build layers of flavour as you go.
The Meal kit has the Butter Chicken spices plus ingredients for Saffron Rice and a delicious Mango rose Lassi.
Design
We were fortunate to work with a Sydney based packaging design agency that understood our ethos. Our very talented designers came up with this beautiful pink and gold box inspired by traditional Indian saris and mandalas.
It was always very important to create a product that looked and felt as beautiful as it tasted, one that sparkled with the joy of cooking for people you love.
Our design philosophy goes beyond the visual graphics. You will find it in the way the friendly recipe booklet is laid out. It tells stories behind the ingredients and traditional cooking techniques. Easy step by step instructions are colour coded to match the colours of spice sachets so you can’t go wrong when cooking. It is almost like we are there, holding your hand.
In fact the complete cooking experience is crafted to make it easy while remaining authentic.
Production
We source our spices from around the world, taking care to avoid any artificial flavours, colours or additives. The spices are roasted, ground and blended into different mixes. They are then packed into individual sachets at our partner HACCP certified facility in Sydney South.
Assembly
Once the spice mixes and other ingredients are filled into sachets they need to be assembled into kits. For this last step, we work with the incredible people at Disability Services Australia in Mascot. At DSA they provide meaningful employment to people with learning difficulties. Here various sachets and other components are assembled into individual kits by hand. This is a small way for us to contribute to the community we belong to, and support the wonderful work done by this social enterprise.
What started out as a small crowd funded project for friends and family on Kickstarter has now evolved into a much loved Butter Chicken kit that has found it’s way into thousands of homes.
A long the way we’ve met and chatted with so many amazing people. Fellow foodies at the markets, people who’ve traveled to India, connoisseurs of spices, chefs from top end restaurants, Mums, Dads and families that love cooking together, other stall holders passionate about the things they make and sell, and an incredible variety of people who just enjoy good food.
It has been a great adventure so far. We would love for you to join us for a bit. Happy Cooking!