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Mrinali Kumar believes animal-free foods taste better. She has linked that belief with another, trying to reduce food waste. This summer her cauliflower ice cream Kinda, produced from vegetables destined to be discarded, will go on sale. Mrinali is a finalist in the Momentum Student Entrepreneur category of the KiwiNet Research Commercialisation Awards.
Photo: Mrinali Kumar
She is turning the cauliflowers that could be left to rot in fields into ice cream which has passed the taste and texture test during blind tasting.
Palmerston North-based Kumar and business partner Jenny Matheson are launching Kinda ice cream this summer.
Strawberry ripple, chocolate ripple and mint chocolate biscuit are the first three flavours with more to come.
Kumar told RNZ's Lynn Freeman today that during blind tasting people couldn't tell cauliflower was among the ingredients in their range.
The food technologist has worked alongside other technical experts on the all-important texture for two years.
"We've worked really hard to make sure it's got the same creaminess, the same stability, the same texture as the standard dairy ice cream."
Kinda has been chosen as the name to meet legal requirements because it does not contain dairy.
The idea arose when she attended a data competition in Taranaki where she met co-founder Matheson who has been a vegan for 20 years.
During a kitchen experiment Matheson tried using cauliflowers and brought the concept to the competition where the pair worked together and then decided to scale it up for a business.
Cauliflower was an excellent ingredient in part because of its colour which suits any flavour being added and its fibre content which helped with texture, Kumar said.
"So many benefits - very easy to use."
Photo: 123RF
The ice cream is not low sugar or low fat but was intended to be "an indulgence" for those with food allergies or people wanting to make a sustainable choice.
Food waste remains huge in New Zealand, Kumar said, with examples including cauliflowers not being harvested because they were judged as not being good enough for sale in the likes of supermarkets.
Kumar and Matheson are working with growers and a social enterprise Perfectly Imperfectly, to rescue such crops.
The pair's main goal is "to show the world New Zealand can produce clean green food".
"We want to show that we can become a leader in the plant-based food space as well."
While Aotearoa was known for its dairy and meat production, the planet could not sustain current methods of food production.
"We really want to show that New Zealand can use the other things we grow, like cauliflower or any other vegetable or fruit, and we can add value to them and create other industries and we can actually lead in them because if we keep going the way we are it's going to have massive long-term consequences."
She recognised that 50,000 people worked in the country's meat and dairy industries so it was important that other employment opportunities were being created in other forms of food production.
New Zealand was a bit behind in the plant-based food industry, however, there were signs of more innovation.
"We're just one of many; it's so exciting to see what New Zealand can really do."