It’s been a long day. You have just come back from school. Your schoolbag has never been heavier, and with every step you take, it gets heavier, weighing you down as if the earth is waiting to swallow you whole. When you finally step into your home, a delicious smell welcomes you warmly, and suddenly, you are not worn out anymore. Your mother has made biryani, and all is well for now.
For many, just like me, food made by our mothers holds a special place forever in our hearts and memories.
Not only do we cherish our food, but it is also considered one of the most delicious cuisines in the world. The world knows us for our food, which is rich and full of spices, made with recipes passed down from one generation to another and is as precious as family heirlooms.
For us, food is not only sustenance but is deeply rooted in our culture, signifying our identity, memory, history and hospitality. To know us is to know our food.
Even so, the fast-paced world has quietly reshaped our culture of food.
Thus, the “Kitchen Cabinet” crisis refers to the disappearance of slow and traditional cooking among our urban youth. As convenience has become an integral part of our lives, we have found our comfort in frozen packets and delivery apps. Our patience has withered as we embrace the newly discovered quick, simple, and easy way to fulfil our cravings for biryani, haleem, and nihari without actually having to learn how to make them.
We love the taste of home, but we’ve forgotten the recipe. However, before you criticise our generation for being ‘lazy’, it’s important to step back. At first glance, it might feel like a cultural loss. But beneath the surface lies a brutal and complicated truth: the losses we might mourn are perhaps rooted in patriarchy, gender roles, and mutilated social values.
The Kitchen: A Woman’s Eternal Abode
In every gathering and dawat, the female members in our families spend hours and hours relentlessly working for a meal for which they will not receive appreciation, nor will they have a moment to relax and enjoy the gathering they are part of. It is not that she is unhappy to take care of her family. Rather, she loves it. But, in all this, she is all alone — it’s her sole responsibility, which is to be fulfilled till death puts a stop to it.
The kitchen was never a neutral space. Cooking was expected of women — a testament to her character and worth as a human — not celebrated but rather imposed. The praise for ‘maa ke haath ka khana’ often comes with the hidden labour of a woman whose efforts are considered to be natural and an obligation. A basic life skill has become infused with gender norms.
Women have spent their entire lives solely with the purpose of feeding their families, while their own identity and ambitions quietly drown in their silence. For many today, rejecting the kitchen is not about dismissing culture — it’s about rejecting centuries of domesticity rooted in misogyny and control.
This is why many young females resent the very idea of cooking. They have been unconsciously conditioned to see cooking as a limitation, not as a skill needed to live their life. Opting out becomes her only option for freedom and becomes an act of resistance.
But the age we live in has made people more aware, making it clear that food is no longer the woman’s responsibility. Both men and women are required to learn to cook. Thus, when a female is not left alone, and the burden is shared, cooking is done out of love, not obligation.
At the same time, women are working long hours alongside men, as the ambition of a career fuels their lives. Commuting, office work and emotional and physical labour leave little room for slow, traditional cooking. Alternate and convenient meals become survival. Quick meals are not laziness but a necessity. As the working and family values shift, so does the cooking — from a daily duty of the woman to an occasional choice shared by both genders.
And yet, despite all this change, the memory of home-cooked food remains strong as ever.
A State of Transition
No delivery app or takeout can replicate a meal made out of love and care by someone who knows you inside out, who knows exactly how much spice you like and who knows the food that comforts you the most. These memories breathe life into us. It reminds us that food is about connection and is a way to showcase love.
Undeniably, we are in a state of transition. This confusion, not limited to food, highlights a broader cultural shift. Periods of change often feel like loss because the old is no more and the new has not arrived. What we are witnessing today is not the end of our traditional cooking but rather a much-needed transformation, which will eventually change our culture for the better.
It is the beginning of a beautiful future. One where cooking is no longer gendered but shared. In this future, men and women will be treated equally in the kitchen. Where cooking is done with recipes inherited by both the sons and daughters of the new generation.
In many ways, this is a revolution, as it challenges the centuries of patriarchy so ingrained in us that we have turned a blind eye to how we have trapped generations of mothers, daughters and wives in the kitchen.
We are going to lose a lot of traditions by breaking this cycle. But this loss is not meant to be dreaded. For we may gain something far more valuable: autonomy, fairness and love that require no conditions nor negotiations.
The traditional Pakistani kitchen is not closing for good. For now, it is being renovated.
And when one day we reclaim our recipes consciously — free from misogyny and rooted by choice — we may reopen our kitchen and honour our culture as well as our progress.
For a culture built on togetherness and traditions, food and love are perhaps synonymous with one another. And thus, our traditional cooking needs time for it to be prepared, shared and preserved without the weight of gendered expectation.