A box of veggies and proteins that’ll make you drool: A city-based food entrepreneur

CHENNAI: Having been in the food business for over 20 years, you can trust Minal Kripalani to know what sells and what doesn’t in Chennai. When she became a food entrepreneur in 1997, Minal was one of the first few home-bakers in Chennai, dishing out delectable cakes and desserts under the name ‘Just-Baked’. A few years later, she started her second business, Jarcode, selling dips, marinades and salad dressings in little jars in the retail space. And now, with ‘Lean On Me’, she has branched out to healthy nutrition, fashioning and innovating salads you had probably never heard of!

Minal loves to experiment with her salads, which she posts on her Instagram page called ‘I cook, I click’. That got a lot of attention from the public, and increased her fan base. That’s when she decided to start ‘Lean On Me’. We couldn’t help but appreciate the pleasantly appropriate naming of all her start-ups. “Yes, I realised I like coining names! I have done that for all my friends too,”she laughs.

“In the beginning I was apprehensive to make food for somebody else, but then I did it for a few people, and after that I realised that the city needs this,” Minal asserts, saying people want to eat healthy, and it’s difficult to make a good salad. “There’s a lot of work involved in making a salad — it’s not just combining cucumber, tomatoes, and onions. I try to make it interesting enough to continue eating it regularly, thus getting the benefits.”

Starting at 6 am, she preps the vegetables, cooks the protein, gets the box ready before measuring the ingredients into each clear box and wrapping them into a brown bag and off to be devoured! Minal’s USP is her no-carb salad offerings. Only proteins, dressing, and vegetables and greens.
The vegetarian options use ingredients like paneer, tofu, sweet potato, legumes like chickpeas, fruits like watermelon, papaya, mango, avocadoes; whereas the non-veg options use egg, prawn chicken tuna. Choosing the vegetables just the day before, she has no fixed menu, but rather chooses what’s fresh in the market and works a recipe around that.

Innovations aplenty, like her khao-suey inspired salad. “The Khao-suey is a noodle meal, with coconut curry. I make a khao-suey salad, where the vegetables are spiralised instead of the noodle, served with the curry and other accompaniments.”The burger salad is a popular favourite — grilled and baked cottage cheese or chicken burger with skinny mayo dressing and cucumber, tomatoes, lots of lettuce. “A healthier way of eating a burger...everything, but the bread, basically,” she explains.  

The bhel puri salad is another customer favourite — it’s like a paneer or chicken chaat, with finely-chopped vegetables, all dressed in green and sweet chutney with a packet of puffed rice as add-on-before-you eat! The crunch of puffed rice, makes it like bhel-puri and Indianised salad, if you will! “Some salads need that extra crunch. For instance, Thai salads has crushed peanuts, the khao-suey salad has crisp tapioca sticks,” she shares.

Didn’t think you’ll find your mouth watering for salads, did you? Her tasty, innovative preparations have even kids clamouring for a bite. “A lot of my clients thank me for getting their kids to eat and enjoy veggies! It feels nice to hear that,” she gushes.

Lean On Me delivers thrice a week — Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Deliveries are done between 12-1 pm. Salads can stay fresh the whole day. For bookings, call: 9840722848