A chef checks a temperature meter as an employee stirs a tonne of cumin in hot oil in a large steel vat. This main ingredient of the Indian dish jeera rice can be poured over a bed of cooked basmati rice only if it has the fragrant, nutty whiff of the Indian tadka – a simple but fussy final step that can go wrong in a minute.
But when the food is prepared in huge volumes, as it is at Singaporean company Sats Food Solutions’ new facility in Bengaluru in southern India, there can be no room for error. So instead of sniffing for authenticity as a home cook will, the chef places his trust on an automatic stove. The 210,000 sq ft central kitchen in Karnataka state, launched with an investment of $61 million on March 15, is the largest Sats food facility outside Singapore, around 20 per cent larger than its next biggest kitchen in China. It also has facilities in Thailand and Japa