Recent
Updates
04.20.2005
(new pictures and text)
04.21.2005
(new pictures and text)
05.02.2005
(new tandoor pictures, added tandoor
cooking page)
05.25.2005
(new pictures added)
Tandoor
Oven Progress
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(04.18.2005) Last year my wife, Eva and I constructed a wood burning pizza oven, the details of which can be found here. Unfortunately for our waistlines, this exercise has conclusively established that the taste of food, out of a wood burning oven, simply cannot be duplicated any other way. So now we are obsessed with the wood burning oven cooking bug.
This weekend brought the first really summer like day of weather to Sacramento and its becoming obvious that standing in front of a roaring fire in the pizza oven on a 105 degree (F) day will not only cook the food in the oven but will also toast up the forward portions of your anatomy with amazing speed.
Conclusion; we need a smaller oven for the hot days of summer. Eva and I love Indian food and because we had some firebrick left over from the pizza oven we have decided to build a Indian tandoor oven. There isn’t nearly as much on-line information about building a tandoor as there is about building a traditional brick oven. There is this site which describes how to build a tandoor from a terracotta pot and there is this one, where Paul Wright describes how to build one from an oil drum (lots of good advice regarding cooking curries there as well), and then there is this site, in which Piers Thompson describes the construction of his tandoor using a commercially produced tandoor liner. Pier’s site is the most comprehensive. And that’s about all there is folks.
We’ve decided on a size for the tandoor of about 17 inches at the base and perhaps 12 inches at the top. The final oven will be either a terracotta pot, or brick, or a combination of both.
So… in the spirit of “making it up as we go along”, here is our tandoor construction blog in which you can follow along as we make our mistakes. This weekend we laid out the perimeter of the oven enclosure with concrete block. Within the enclosure we have laid an insulating base of 2 inches of vermiculite and cement.
Vermiculite base on concrete patio (about 32
inches square)
We leveled the vermiculite and laid a firebrick base on top of this and then packed more vermiculite and cement around the bricks to hold them in place. I used a mud of fireclay, sand and water under the bricks where needed, to fine tune the leveling of the base. (Always lay your “high” brick first if you need to make small adjustments to the level).
Firebrick base surrounded by vermiculite and
cement
The remaining vermiculite insulation will be poured in dry (without cement to bind it) once the tandoor is built.
(04.20.2005) Got a new (bigger) terra cotta pot from Home Despot with an internal diameter of 18 inches. Cut the bottom off with the angle grinder. Bottom hole will be big enough to slap naan onto the side without accidentally burning the wrist. It so happens that Weber makes a grill which will fit inside on the little ledge of firebricks. I need to cut the grill in half so I can insert and remove it as desired. The lower level of firebricks has been mortared as shown below.
About 30 inches high
Air Hole (and ash removal hole) in the Back
About
(04.21.2005) I think the tandoor might need some more thermal mass and also perhaps some more support (in the event it cracks). I have no idea whether or not this will work and as I told Eva this morning, this might end up as our “practice” tandoor. In any event, we mixed up a mortar of fireclay, sand and cement in the ratio of (approximately) 2-2-1. I have seen a lot of discussion about mortar strengths and ability of cement to withstand high heat in the oven forums. However, this site shows someone who is using mortar materials available at home depot to build containers in which he melts metal; seriously, is your oven going to get hot enough to melt aluminum?
The mortar mixture was wetted to the consistency of modeling clay and then applied to the pot (after wrapping the pot in wire).
Wire Wrapped Pot
The clay shrunk over night and we had quite a few big cracks in the mortar this morning. But as my friend John the Greek used to say, “There are 3 responses to any situation which are always appropriate; (1) so what, (2) who cares and (3) big deal”. Tonight, a small test fire …
Bring on the
Cow Chips …
(05.02.2005) This weekend we built up the walls around the tandoor and filled the cavity with perlite (until I ran out). Must make Home Despot run this afternoon.
As I figure it, that space in the wall will be
too small for perlite to flow thru… Doh!!!
Well you can’t make that much progress without cooking something, right? So we had the first meal out of the tandoor this weekend.
Fire in the Hole !!!!
Got the oven up to about 600 F and still no cracks. I’m going to have to practice at fire management. It’s not as easy as the pizza oven has become and flare-ups are a problem. But the food tasted authentico. So, I’ve added a tandoor cooking page here to display the first of many meals (hopefully).
(05.25.2005) Finished the countertop. The countertop around the tandoor is only loosely attached (in the event it needs to be removed for repairs). Going to have a tandoor party this weekend I think.
If you’re looking for skewers and other Tandoor accessories, a good place to try is Nishi Enterprise. They have a good selection and excellent prices.
Any questions / comments? You can contact me at:
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Copyright 2004 - 2005 Robert and Eva Musa