Modern Cookware Brands Are Getting Culturally Specific

Just three weeks after announcing her debut cookbook deal, Khushbu Shah, previously the restaurant editor at Food & Wine, slid into the DMs of Chip Malt, the co-founder of cookware company Made In. What if they collaborated on a South Asian cookware collection tied to the release of her book?

When it came to South Asian cookware, like tawas for dosa and roti and masala dabbas for storing all your go-to spices in one space, the options that Shah encountered in the United States left her wanting in terms of variety and quality, despite ample, high-quality options in India. Accordingly, “I sourced all of mine basically from my mom,” says Shah, a former Eater writer. “Then, she gets annoyed because she has to wait for my uncle in India [to visit], or she has to go to India to source stuff again.”

Shah’s inquiry — and her general idea that the cookware brand might be open to branching into this other, underlooked cookware market — was motivated in part by the comal that Made In makes with the masa company Masienda. Its approach to the comal seemed “thoughtful,” Shah says, like it was coming “from a place of appreciation, not from a place of ‘discovery.’ I think that was really important.”

On March 14, over two years after Shah’s initial message, Made In released its Amrikan collection, featuring a tawa, a masala dabba, and a kadai, a wide, deep vessel that’s good for making saucy dishes and frying. The line gets its name from Shah’s book, Amrikan: 125 Recipes from the Indian American Diaspora, which is due from W. W. Norton & Company in June.

Made In

A kadai is not unlike a wok, a tawa not dissimilar to a crepe pan. But unlike a wok or a crepe pan, you can’t buy a kadai or a tawa billed as such from Williams-Sonoma. It’s a little thing, sure, but it’s yet another of those translations that diasporic communities always have to make: learning to call something by its “mainstream” approximation, and subbing in this ingredient or that vegetable as “good enough” in the absence of the real thing. What would it mean to be able to shop without this translation, for a company to shift its gaze slightly and simply address the other needs that have been there? Some modern cookware companies are now trying to figure that out.

Our Place, the DTC cookware brand whose colorful pan is certainly all over your social feeds, has offered products that it dubs “Traditionware” since shortly after its inception in 2019. These are culturally specific offerings, like a ceramic platter that fits snugly atop the company’s signature pan to make it easier to flip tahdig, and a fry set that features a wavy golden cooling rack, an intricate matching slotted spoon, and two clay diyas, since the set was created in celebration of Diwali. These Traditionware launches tend to coincide with holidays, with their many cooking traditions.

“As a Pakistani, I’ve never seen my traditions represented in the mainstream, and as a Persian, [my partner] Amir [Tehrani] hadn’t either,” says co-founder Shiza Shahid. The flipping platter, for example, was initially created for Nowruz, the Persian New Year. “We wanted to build a brand that celebrated Ramadan, Nowruz, and Nochebuena as loudly and proudly as we celebrate more ‘mainstream’ holidays here, and really make it by and for the community,” Shahid says.

When it comes to Traditionware, Shahid explains, the ideas are raised by members of the community, and the designs and promotion also involve the community. The golden fry set, for example, was designed by the Indian brand Lekha and the artist Manjit Thapp, and each element is sourced from and made in India. For a recent Eid launch, the brand worked with a Muslim photographer and stylist; part of the profits will go toward humanitarian aid in Gaza. The goal is for people from all kinds of cultures — especially those who don’t see themselves reflected or spoken to directly by other brands — to see themselves, Shahid explains.

The flipping platter in particular has taught Our Place an important lesson: Although it created the platter specifically with tahdig in mind, fans offered that the platter could also work for crispy, flipped rice dishes from other cuisines like nurungji, maqluba, and concón. “That’s the beauty of it: You have to be specific, because if you’re trying to speak to everyone, then no one will feel like it’s for them,” Shahid says. “But if you are specific, then other people will see their own cultures in it.”

Our Place

Despite good intentions, there are still challenges in producing cookware like this. Although Shah initially brought a long list of cookware suggestions to Made In, including a ceramic pot for making chai and a wooden velan for rolling chapati and paratha, it came down to a question of what made the most sense for the company to produce given its existing production capabilities.

“If we can only invest a certain amount in [specialized tools], buying initial product, and telling stories, what are the most critical [items] we should focus on?” recalls co-founder Jake Kalick.

Without an established supply chain or production system for the ceramic or wood cookware that Shah suggested, those items didn’t make sense for the company, Kalick explains. Instead, it was about deciding which suggestions of Shah’s were important, but still fit within what Made In already knows how to do well, like stainless and carbon steel. “We already understand the material, we have the supply chain set up; let’s just dial in on the shape and how it should perform,” Kalick says.

There was also the fact that Kalick and Malt didn’t know much about Indian cooking going into the project. Despite its materials and manufacturing expertise, the company didn’t necessarily know “the cultural side of things,” as Shah puts it. This allowed them to defer to Shah and the other Indian chefs who tested the products during development. As Kalick explains, “It was all about having the authority of Khushbu telling us: This is what makes this good, this is what makes this bad.”

These products are about not settling for what’s there amid an uneven status quo, but asking for and believing in better. Masienda founder Jorge Gaviria, with whom Made In makes the comal, has stated that one of his goals with his company — which preserves and promotes heirloom corn and sells products around it, including a high-end tortilla press — is to “reinvent the entire masa value chain from scratch.”

As is the case with Our Place’s Traditionware, while Made In’s Amrikan collection is specific, it’s also not limited. A masala dabba might be most used for Indian spices, but Shah also has another one for holding dried Italian herbs and other seasonings, she notes. And you can cook anything in a kadai. Fans of Made In who might be less versed in Indian cuisine may not know offhand what these items are, but could then become familiar through their interest in the brand. To Shah, the cookware line is guided by a similar goal to her book: She wants people to feel comfortable with Indian cuisine.

Fanesha Fabre is a Brooklyn based, Dominican born multimedia artist.