Topic: Home Tandoor Tips

[JerryM]

mickdabass,

loving the post please keep us informed on your journey.

it's already making me wrestless especially seeing the naan useage. might yet have to do a bit of brickying at home.

[mickdabass]

Thanks Jerry will do.
I am hoping to do a bit more on saturday and will keep my reports as honest as i can.
Plan on repeating last week ends efforts and following all the advice i have been given i am hoping to crack the seekh kebabs which are a bit of a family favourite atm

[mickdabass]

Just recieved my balti dishes and spices from spicesofindia (the rest of my birthday present) and must say what a helpful and obliging firm they are.
Imagine my surprise when I studied the invoice and noticed they had REIMBURSED ME IN FULL for the balti dishes 
I  had sent them an email last week asking  them about Tandoor lids and they said that they would source one and send it to me. I also asked them if they could do anything on the price of ovens to cr0 members and their reply was that they couldn't give any more discount on the ovens as they are already discounted (?325 to ?285) but they are looking at possibly setting up a voucher code to recieve a FREE Tandoor Starter Set.

[Razor]

Hi Mick,

Great work with the voucher thingy.

Ray

[mickdabass]

ok heres the weekend update. Saturday was a good learning day. The weather was mild and windy
 I loaded the tandoor with 2 x 2Kg bags of self lighting charcoal, opened up the bottom vent, lit them and put my "lid" on top of the tandoor. Checked on it about an hour later and decided that I would cook some more chicken tikka.
The tandoor temperature didnt feel that hot (scientifically measured by putting
my hand inside) and so I put a skewer of chicken inside. I kept it cooking for about 18 minutes before removing it.
Unfortunately the top 2 pieces of chicken  needed some additional cooking. The next skewer I prepared, I put the Smaller pieces of meat on the skewer first
and the larger pieces on last. I know some of you are probably saying that its common sense to do it that way but remember I am learning all about this from
scratch. The second (and third and fourth) skewer was more successful because of this. Cooking time came down to about 12 minutes. Obviously the Tandoor was still heating up but no where near the temp I had it last weekend
 
Back to the seekh kebabs.I had some CA's Keema mince left from last week and decided to use it purely for experimentation and not for consumption. I had about 1/4 left so I decided to try adding another egg as a binder. The finished mix appeared to be too sticky but thought  I would give it a go anyway. The outcome was as expected...disaster but I had to go through the motions just to put my mind at rest.
Anyhow I binned the remaining Keema and decided to start again from scratch.

After the kebab experiment I had run out of time for the day and after checking the weather forecast I thought that sunday would probably be a non starter

Got up sunday morning and the weather didnt seem too bad so I thought I would scrape out the ashes and have another go. I noticed quite a lot of cinders in
the ashes and then I realised that for some reason not all the charcoal had burnt. Why? The only conclusion was that I had used too much charcoal from the start. By the end of the day the height of the ash in the bottom of the tandoor was above the level of the vent and therefore restricted the ventilation and restricted the heat!!
Hmmm...Theres a lot more to this than I thought

Learning from my mistakes I re-lit the tandoor with only 1 bag of charcoal and left it to warm up for about 1 hour. Decided to give it another bag of charcoal and another hour and returned later to give it a try.I then went in the kitchen to prepare the keema / seekh mix.This time I bunged all the ingredients into the wifes kenwood mixer and let it do its job. I actually reduced the gram flour by about 1/3 (2 tbsp instead of 3) Dont know why I did this...but I did lol .I left it mixing for about 2 minutes and the resulting mince looked a tad runny. I decided to give it a try anyway Loaded the skewer and pressed the meat onto it with my hand using some cold water as a lubricant (thanks Razor).

Success.  ;D ;D ;D

I then went on to cook 15 more kebabs and only had two meet a firey demise!!

Next on the list were the naans. I took UB's advice and tried Taz's naan mix (Thanks UB). Unfortunately I added too much oil and the dough lost all its elasticity so I binned that and tried again but also reduced the oil by 1/3 to 2 tbsp. Again I used the wifes kenwood to mix that. The resulting dough was a little sticky but very elastic. I rolled the naans out as thin as I could, and before loading onto the cushion, I rolled them over a couple of cloves of coarsly chopped garlic & corriander. Cooking time was about 3 minutes, but that gave them a nice crisp outer and a  bread-like core (see photos).
The finished naans were without doubt some of the nicest I have ever eaten
The weather slowly got worse during the day turning to drizzle but I dont think it affected the tandoor temperature too much.
I finished cooking at about 5pm

Haldis post was enlightening with  regard temperature. The obvious disadvantage of a charcoal powered tandoor is that its harder and takes far longer to control the temperature
The advantage being that the food tastes better when cooked with charcoal


Things learnt so far

I feel a bit stupid writing all this stuff I know this is all common sense... but its good therapy for me lol
Cooking with a Tandoor is really identical in almost every way to conventinal bbq cooking.
Temperature is the most important
You can get a tandoor too hot
The type of fuel is crucial
Too hot and the food is burnt on the outside and uncooked inside
Too cold (in the case of naans) and the naans dont stick to the walls or they are too leathery in texture because of the prolonged cooking time
Typically the naans stick well to start with, but as soon as they start to blister, they detach themselves
Last week I got the temperature up much higher.I Wouldnt be suprised if it was twice as hot judging by the cooking times (45sec - 1 min for a naan last week: 3 minutes this week) The reason was that I used the last few charcoal "brickettes" purchased from Homebase which are far superior imo to normal "lumpwood" charcoal. Thanks UB for the info on the Restaurant Charcoal
A pair of leather gardening gloves/ gauntlets are essential - unless you are some kind of masochist
Use a food mixer to blend keema mince
I will post some photos a bit later

Regards
Mick

[mickdabass]

Garlic & Coriander naan








Seekh-cess

[mickdabass]

another close-up



Keema Naan and Seekh on the go


Yum

[JerryM]

mickdabass,

any chance of an external view of the tandoor. from the inside pic not like what i imagined from the spice of india website.

must declare my interest is really in wood burning oven for pizza for summer use (for info have done 100% U turn on my existing domestic oven which is now fab). if i could somehow make the outdoor oven multi purpose for naan and tikka then clearly heaven.

very best wishes and just loving the in depth reports.

[George]

I loaded the tandoor with 2 x 2Kg bags of self lighting charcoal, opened up the bottom vent, lit them and put my "lid" on top of the tandoor.

Mick - many thanks for your very interesting reports and images of delicious-looking food.

I thought lumpwood charcoal was best because there's no risk of bad-smelling chemicals being included. Either way, Tte cost of the charcoal puts me off, though. It must make the food far more expensive than ordering a take-away, even if it is fun.

I've been working on my homemade tandoor for a few months and am still not convinced it gets hot enough. Until I figure out how to get it hotter, I'm not going to try out any food.

[Razor]

Mick,

Great work, a very productive weekend indeed.  I hear what you are saying with regards to things being "common sense"  but hey, even Gordan Ramsey struggled with the old Tandoor, so don't worry about that.

The Seekhs looked great, and the chicken tikka, well, I'm slavering like a pitbull just looking at them ;D

Naan bread, well, I'm not a big lover of it to be honest, much preferring paratha's.  The only naan bread that I've ever really liked, was from my very old favourite TA.  They were very thin,  slightly crisp, and a little lemony, if my memory serves me good.  They were also yellow in colour, which he said was down to the amount of oil that he used to make them?  I've never seen yellow naans since but they were really good.

I also agree with George, I much prefer lump wood on my BBQ, just my preference I guess.  I struggle to understand why people find BBQ or indeed, Tandoori cooking expensive though.  The idea is to cook lots of food, fast.  It will be expensive if your firing it up for only a couple of people, but for large amounts, I would have thought that it should be quite economical?

Exactly how many briquettes would you say that you are using per 'load'?  I would have thought that no more than 10, golf ball size pieces would be sufficient, for about an hours worth of cooking, maybe be adding the odd briquette here and there?  I have always thought that, it is the design of the tandoor that allows for the high temps, rather than the amount of fuel used?  Of course, using a lid, and venting properly will help disperse the heat better around the pot and intensify the heat.

All of my above thoughts are of course, based on no experience whatsoever BTW ;D

Come summertime (whenever that may be) you will be our tandoor expert, of that I have no doubt.

Well done Mick, keep up the good work fella

Ray