Topic: Home Tandoor Tips

[mickdabass]

Thank you all for your kind words and advice. 
Hi Jerry 
I will post a pic of the tandoor later. Its quite compact standing not much more than knee height or 22"and weighs 40kg. Its on some very good casters but is still fairly ma nagable for me to lift on my own. 

George 
I know where you are coming from with the briquettes. You could perhaps use them early on to get the temp up and then switch to lumpwood later to cook on. 
The potential output of food from this thing is IMO quite impressive: 7 skewers of chicken say 2 breasts per skewer say 15 minutes cooking time? I think that's quite good. You could possibly get 5 or 6 naans on the go at any one time say 3 minutes each..... You do the math!!!
I will keep an eye on the fuel consumption but I think I used about ?5 worth of charcoal over about 5 hours

Ray
I would think I would use about 20 briquettes at a time although this is a very rough guess. The thing is that every time you load it with fuel you cant really cook on it so rather than add them little and often I have been tending to add quite a few not too often. Perhaps my methodology will change with experience.
Only time will tell

[George]

George - I know where you are coming from with the briquettes. You could perhaps use them early on to get the temp up and then switch to lumpwood later to cook on.

Actually, thinking about it, they wouldn't sell briquettes if they were no good for cooking, so perhaps they are OK.

I just tried cooking some naan bread on my "MkII" homemade tandoor oven. I was going to open a new thread but there's so little to say, I may as well write it up here. It was a failure, taking far too long to cook.

Afterwards I cooked some of the same dough under the grille and it was much better. Neither was there any hint of a 'smokey' flavour to the first batch, so where's the advantage of using charcoal? It's so messy, even if it is a bit 'romantic'. I doubt if I've ever had naans or anything else cooked over charcoal in a BIR. I bet they all use gas, and always have.  I will have one stab at a MkIII oven designed purely to cook tikka. It doesn't need to be very large because a batch of tikka is so small.

My failed MkII oven was made from a medium-sized propane cylinder with at least 12" of insulation all around in an attempt to build up the heat. Inside the cylinder were numerous storage heater bricks, placed to hold and radiate heat from the first hour of firing, being wood and logs, The temperature must have been sky-high at thar point, given all the flames. Then I added charcoal. I would have predicted this set-up should have become hotter than a tandoor but it seems not, if the naan bread is anything to go by. I never did measure the temperature but it's a bit academic if I can't even cook a naan bread. The bread was loaded vertically on to a granite slab, also pre-warmed in all the flames, and designed to resemble a section of the side of a tandoor.

[mickdabass]

Sounds good george. I am suprised that you didnt have more success. Have you explored the avalability of a clay liner? Are proper tandoor liners available? I seem to remember UB used a large teracotta flour pot? I would have thought that if you got the ventillation sorted youd be laughing

[George]

Sounds good george. I am suprised that you didnt have more success. Have you explored the avalability of a clay liner? Are proper tandoor liners available? I seem to remember UB used a large teracotta flour pot? I would have thought that if you got the ventillation sorted youd be laughing

Yes, I was surprised, too. I hoped that my oven temperature would go higher than a tandoor. Clay liners may hold some heat but I thought storage heater bricks would be more efficient or else they would use clay tablets inside electric storage heaters. I also covered the flue/chimney to keep in even more heat, but none of these steps proved sufficient. The charcoal was glowing brightly and everything looked good but the naan bread was a failure.  Your oven temperature will hopefully increase when you fit a lid.

[mickdabass]

Hi Jerry
Photo as promised

[Unclebuck]

Hi Mick,

You do need a lid/cover, i just made mine out of some stainless steel sheet which i robed of a dishwasher door!

the one in the pic was a proto type but you get the idea

[JerryM]

mickdabass & UB,

many thanks for pic and the extra spec details (a whiles since sand bags and such like were 40g). food for thought.

George,

any chance of some pics of your set up. i like the idea of the vertical sheet for naan cooking.

[George]

George, any chance of some pics of your set up. i like the idea of the vertical sheet for naan cooking.

Certainly, when I find the devices I use to upload images from my camera to the computer. It's not pretty though, like the two stylish ovens shown above. It was my prototype for a 'proof of concept' which turned out to be a 'proof of failure.' I'm still at a loss to understand why, given the large burning chamber and loads of insulation, and other measures.

Here are some photos taken last summer:





The door was made like the door or a bank vault, being several inches thick and packed with vermiculite. The rest of the cylinder was well wrapped with loft insulation. Any ideas as to why it still didn't seem to get hot enough?

[mickdabass]

UB that looks like a smart bit of kit.I remember following your "Constructing a Home Tandoor" thread a while back now with great interest  and have contemplated copying your design How did you manage to protect it from the frost?. Spicesofindia have promised me a free lid with my next order! Cant say fairer than that. Theyll be giving me a free t shirt next lol. Anyhow id better shut up about them or youll all think I work for them or something

George
I dont know why your prototype doesnt get up to temp but i bet someone on this forum could answer your question. Im sorry i cant help

[JerryM]

George,

many thanks for pics - took me by surprise - some real engineering going on.

i can't believe it's not getting up to temp.

are the blocks inside what the naan is being cooked on once the flames have subsided.

i think you might need to invest in an infrad red thermometer to understand better what is happening.

only thought from my chiminea experience is that it's quite a balancing act between too hot and too cold (for tikka). you may need a longer warm up or more mass to help keep the heat high but without too much flame.

i know from my recent pizza work that quarry tiles take a long time ~1hr to heat but then stay hot for hrs (something like 3 hrs before i can take them out of my electric kitchen oven).

all very interesting stuff.