It is only available on Legel, a home shopping channel, or bought directly from Korean sellers on popular shopping portal Gmarket.com.sg, but thousands of these pans have been snapped up here as word of the pan has spread on Facebook as well as forums.
Happy Call touts itself as a "miracle" pan that minimizes cooking smells and reduces the amount of oil needed to make fried chicken crispy and food fragrant. The manufacturers also claim that its pressure-cooking technology works to keep vegetables green and crunchy with less cooking time.
The Happy Call community has become so popular that when someone posted a recipe for "Muah Chee" (sticky steamed dough with peanuts) on Munch Ministry, an online portal for people to share Happy Call recipes; glutinous rice flour and peanut powder were sold out at most Giant and NTUC supermarkets for the next few days.
Good friends Pauline Wong and Louisa Loh told Yahoo! Singapore that the secret to Happy Call's huge popularity lies in its ability to get around the inconveniences of cooking at home.
The biggest reason why the pan is such a hit, according to them, is that it makes cooking look so simple.
"I used to only cook at home two times a week because the idea of doing the washing up and all the cooking smells would turn me off," said Wong, who is a housewife. "The pan minimizes the smells of frying fish because its closed, and the non-stick coating can be cleaned with just a paper towel."
The pair also said that cooking vegetables in the pan only required a "ten-cent coin" sized drop of oil to cook and appealed to many mothers who wanted to start eating healthily.
"When I cooked a full meal for my family on the pan, my husband and kids were amazed and I found that I really enjoyed making home cooked food for dinner," said Wong, who has two young children.
Both Loh and Wong feel that the pan has improved their meals, but also say that learning to cook with the pan is a learning process and aspiring cooks should not be discouraged if they fail in the beginning.
Firstly, the pan is heavy - weighing between 1.5 to 1.9 kg, making storage in a small kitchen inconvenient and difficult to move around for first-time cooks. Flipping fried fish in the pan when you're not an expert can result in the fish breaking apart.
Secondly, the pan does not work on induction stoves, and reacts differently to different stoves.
"When I first got my pan, I tried making some salmon. I charred it on the outside because the heat was too high," said Wong. "Some of the Munch Ministry members have written in to say that even at their stove's lowest heat, their food would still burn."
For those looking to buy their first pans, Wong and Loh recommend buying off Gmarket, which, at $62.90 before shipping is the cheapest on the market.
Gmarket sellers also often throw in freebies like silicon gloves and mats.
"Using the pan is really a trial and error process, but once you taste success, you would want to keep trying," said Loh.
ORIGINAL SOURCE: http://sg.entertainment.yahoo.com/blogs/singapore-showbiz/happy-call-pan-omenon-132809711.html
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