No Self-Respecting South Asian Cook Uses Masalas Out of a Box — Except This One

The curious case of the brand at the heart of Pakistan’s culinary conscience

Photo by Maryam Jilliani

It’s a refrain you hear often: No self-respecting South Asian cook uses pre-made masalas out of a box.

Food writers, cookbook authors, and South Asian culinary experts at-large either lament the use of pre-made masalas or act as if they simply aren’t used. Sameen Rushdie, author of “Indian Cookery,” finds the commercial, ready-made ground mixtures “unpalatable.”

Sumayya Usmani, author of the award-winning Pakistani cookbook “Summers Under the Tamarind Tree,” writes that growing up she was taught to spend money on only the best whole spices, “never ground.” Celebrity chef and prolific author Madhur Jaffrey says: “Indian cooks insist on freshly ground spices instead of a bottled mixture that is powdered and possibly stale.”

These declarations conjure an image of a South Asian housewife dutifully measuring, toasting, and grinding complex spice blends every morning, rather than of a billion-dollar South Asian packaged spice blend industry growing at a healthy clip, both within the subcontinent and overseas.

One of Pakistan’s leading global brands is in fact, Shan Foods, a company so popular that it has become a verb for using pre-packaged masala. “Just Shan Masala it,” my friends tell me every time I complain of not being able to nail down a specific recipe.

Despite what the South Asian food police may tell you, pre-packaged spices are here to stay, especially when they are as good as Shan Masala.

“There is a prejudice among many authors and what they don’t realize is that the consumer community really doesn’t care,” Kurush F. Dalal, a culinary anthropologist and assistant professor at the University of Mumbai, tells me when asked about the snobbery around pre-packaged spices. “It’s about much more than spices or spice snobbery. It’s a complicated sociological phenomenon.”

Dalal says that in the last 50 years or so, the subcontinent has seen women’s emancipation in a very quiet way, not with respect…