Archana Mundhe
My name is Archana, and I am the founder of the food blog Ministry of Curry and the author of the Amazon best-selling The Essential Indian Instant Pot Cookbook.
I'm grateful to connect with and inspire more than a million followers worldwide through my easy and precise Indian recipes developed to maintain authentic flavors, whether made in the Instant Pot or on the stovetop.
I live in Northern New Jersey with my husband and our two children.
My Cooking Journey
I was born and raised in a small town near Mumbai in a Maharashtrian family, eating my mom's scrumptious food. My mom is a talented chef and a food enthusiast. Her food not only tastes amazing and draws flavors and spices from all over India, but is also a feast for the eyes.
In 1997, I moved to the United States, over 8000 miles away from my mother's gourmet cooking. Her flavors and aromas lived so vividly in my memory that, with her guidance and exact techniques, I learned to make my dishes taste just like hers. Before I knew it, I was spending more and more time in the kitchen, experimenting with different ingredients, cuisines, presentations, and sharing my simplified recipes with family and friends.
Ministry of Curry
In 2016, I launched Ministry of Curry with the vision of preserving my family's stories and recipes while making cooking simple and fun for novice and expert cooks alike. And since then, I have been on a mission to develop easy recipes, combining modern techniques and authentic flavors.
My Cookbook
In October 2018, I published my first book, The Essential Indian Instant Pot Cookbook, authorized by the Instant Pot, with Ten Speed Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House. I've been featured in Oprah, brit + co, Dr. Oz Show, The Washington Post, Food52, Epicurious, Taste Cooking, Austin360, Journal now The Telegraph, The Week, The Parkersburg News and Sentinel, and People Magazine.
Since the book, there has been no stopping or looking back. I have never worked harder, and I am loving every minute of it. And what keeps me going on my hardest days is the connection I have with my followers - their success stories with my dishes fuel my passion for developing more recipes.
My other source of daily inspiration is my family. I love watching my children grow up eating and appreciating the same food I did at their age. It makes me so proud to see my boys learning to cook and inventing their own recipes. We all look forward to a home-cooked feast; it's what brings us together so many times in a day. Every day, my home echoes with the same words I still say to my mom every time we speak ………."Mom, what's for dinner?"
Welcome to Ministry of Curry. So happy you stopped by!
