Thanks to the tandoor for lovers of country picnics no need to spend money on ordering Asian dishes and kebab.
You can prepare all this yourself, yourself, for free, and at any time, without worrying about the quality of the products. who has the skill to work with bricks can build a stove
Odnoklassniki
The principle of operation of the tandoor
Regardless of size, shape or region of origin, all tandoors operate on essentially the same principle: a fire is lit at the bottom of the oven and transfers heat to the clay walls, which have excellent storage properties. After the fuel has turned into coals, dough is placed on the inner surface of the walls, which within a few minutes turns into aromatic and tasty bread. The meat is usually strung on skewers, lowered into the mouth of the oven and turns out surprisingly juicy, like, in fact, any product of convection cooking.
One of the biggest advantages of these stoves is that once they are heated, they will maintain a constant high temperature (480°C) for several hours with very little additional fuel. This is a big plus in parts of the world where fuel is scarce.
Functionality
One or two functions for a fireplace is really not enough. Multifunctionality is what interests the consumer!
Brazier
A device for cooking meat on skewers. There's nothing much to brag about here. Make a shish kebab on the coals, boil water, cook the broth over wood fire.
It seems that with the advent of new options for outdoor fireplaces, the barbecue should go into retirement. But manufacturers stubbornly do not let this device die, making super-compact collapsible structures and even changing its orientation to vertical!
A theoretically justifiable but impractical attempt to use radiant heat for barbecue.
Traditional braziers are equipped with lids and adapted for smoking. The main problem is the air supply to the coals. Lateral – sensitive to wind. The lower adjustable one is complicated, expensive, and is used in a professional kitchen. The lack of airflow results in uneven burning, which often causes the meat to dry out.
From an aesthetic point of view, the grill is not considered: any paint eventually burns, its particles can enter the body along with the meat.
B-B-Q
– open round grill, modern version. In it, food is placed on a wire rack. Fry over coals at low heat: 100-120 °C. The process lasts quite a long time, which becomes its MAIN problem, but more on that below.
Grill
The grill is a popular appliance that has even been modified to allow you to cook in your home! Grilled meat is cooked on a grill, under a lid - it can be smoked. The coals are ignited in a special starter mug. Only then are they loaded into the grill, ensuring even heating of the grate.
Organizing air circulation - taking into account the fact that it is not recommended to open the lid, has a lot of nuances. Coal fires are common and dangerous to the unprepared.
Placing food tightly on the grill will extinguish the fire; falling embers may block the lower air supply openings.
A sensor is required: temperature control cannot be established by other methods.
In general, there are enough nuances.
B-B-Q
The barbecue is a round grill with a grate. Meat is cooked in it for an EXTREMELY long time, when heated just above 100 ° C. You can also bake fish and vegetables in it. But you need to constantly monitor the products: correct them, turn them over.
To summarize, we will do without analyzing heat and moisture exchange in the listed devices. These figures are far from ideal.
Tandoor
Despite its ancient origins and absolute simplicity, the tandoor shows amazing results in comparison. Baked meat of unusual juiciness, vegetables in their own juice, rosy, plump flatbreads like pillows - the list is endless.
Even the uninitiated understands that if meat is boiled, it is completely immersed in water. Classic grilling (firing) should work the same way: radiant heat from below, above, from the sides. This is achieved in a closed volume.
Heating of the product in the tandoor occurs due to the thermal conductivity of the products and mass transfer (moisture movement from the surface to the center of the product). It happens more intensely than during cooking. The readiness temperature (70 – 80° C) inside is reached VERY quickly.
A thick wall up to 6 mm thick ensures heat accumulation. The expansion in the middle and narrowing in front of the lid directs it to the center of the tandoor - to the place where voluminous meat fragments (leg or roast beef) hang on the hook. Pieces of meat on skewers - kebab or chicken tikka are placed closer to the walls, which speeds up cooking. Uniform heating does not require additional manipulations with the product!
The aesthetic and elegant appearance of this hearth is associated not with a stove, but with a nectar jug, which must be handled carefully and carefully. Fear not: it is made of special clay, which allows it to withstand high rates of thermal heating, including accidental impacts.
The color of the inner surface indicates that the tandoor is ready for loading: the soot has fallen off and the surface has turned white - feel free to load it.
The accessories included in the kit allow you to use all culinary techniques for processing products. And, besides, they are very convenient in the process!
Types of tandoor
Depending on the material of manufacture, tandoor ovens are divided into clay, brick, ceramic and metal. The type of fuel divides tandoors into wood, gas and electric.
Clay ovens follow the contours of a traditional tandoor and are made of special clay that does not crack at high temperatures. Often such clay is mixed with sheep wool and even earth for strength. In our country, Uzbek tandoors made of eight-millimeter clay, completely unfired to a ceramic state, are especially popular. The source material itself also plays a role: clay for Uzbek tandoors, which has special properties, is taken from strictly defined areas, near Akhangaran, kneaded like dough and left to “ripen” for more than a day or two.
Brick tandoors, to give them the shape of a jug, are built by laying halves of bricks in a circle and fastening them with clay-cement mortar.
Ceramic tandoors are bread ovens with an ornamental coating of small ceramic tiles. Previously, such decor marked the high status of the owner of the tandoor, but today it is just a beautiful decoration, nothing more
Metal (steel) tandoors are most often of factory origin and are made mainly for commercial use: cafes and restaurants. Their shape is not necessarily jug-shaped - the body can be rectangular, spherical or even polygonal. Inside the body is a clay pot surrounded by insulation to retain heat. Typically, such stoves run on fuel wood, but there are also gas models.
Where to install a country tandoor: a gazebo or veranda under a canopy
open areas with a stone base are suitable for installing the stove , and it would be nice with an additional elevation.
Cooking in a tandoor involves working with an open fire, which rises to 1 m . There should be no vegetation, wooden structures, or other foreign objects within a radius of approximately fifteen meters
A mobile or portable tandoor can be brought into the gazebo or onto the veranda where the participants of the meal have gathered, in order to distribute portions to everyone there. But this is only allowed after the coals have burned out and died out .
Gas and wood tandoors
A gas-powered tandoor is made of steel and is very similar to a wood-burning metal tandoor, the only difference is the fuel used. These furnaces typically run on propane or natural gas. The body of the gas tandoor is equipped with burners and a reflective plate to remove the flame. They are very easy to use, economical and effective for cooking, but their installation is quite complex and requires professional knowledge.
Wood-burning tandoors are considered the most common; gas or electric ones are less commonly used, which, despite the similarity of the technological process, do not give the dish the same aroma as a wood-burning oven.
Briefly about tandoor and what to cook in it
You can talk about its history for a long time. Asian peoples were the first to use stoves. Previously, it was built from clay, independently deepened into the ground. Now this no longer makes sense; in Russia for a long time you can buy a convenient non-stationary oriental stove in the shape of a jug or sphere.
To cook delicious dishes in a tandoor, you don’t need to waste a lot of firewood. The walls of the tandoor hold the heat well and retain heat for a long time. The products are baked evenly, retain all their benefits (unlike barbecue) and acquire incredible taste.
The range of tandoor dishes is impressive:
- meat
. He has priority. The taste of, for example, pork kebab will be unusual and unlike anything else. You can also bake chicken, turkey, hare, leg of lamb, ribs and much more;
Important!
When cooking shish kebab in an oriental roasting pan, there is no need to turn the skewers. You just need to time it.
- fish
. It turns out incredibly tasty and aromatic; - bread
. The simplest bread product from the tandoor is flatbread, but there are a lot of recipes for bread and pastries. Samsa turns out great or khachapuri; - dishes in cast iron
- pilaf, delicious soups, shurpa, vegetables.
This incomparable aroma of tandoor dishes will not leave anyone indifferent!
Simple do-it-yourself tandoor (video instructions)
You can make a tandoor with your own hands using a very simple scheme, taking several clay pots and placing them inside each other. The pot inside such a ceramic barrel should be surrounded by a thermal insulation layer: rock salt, vermiculite powder or glass wool. If the outer casing is not ceramic, but steel, then a hole can be made in the lower part of the barrel to remove ash. In this case, wheels can be attached to the bottom of the body for easy transportation of the stove. The result is an oven for perfect outdoor baking.
Possible problems
The brick tandoor is the most difficult to manufacture. Only a person with experience in building stoves can do it on their own. If there is none, it is better to entrust the work to Asian stove makers.
It is somewhat easier to make a country tandoor based on an existing frame , for example, an iron barrel.
But even there it is necessary to follow the technology to avoid cracking of the furnace, especially for mortar.
Tandoors (photo gallery)
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Service life, operating costs
Grills and egg-shaped barbecues made of thin metal will last for several years. Cast iron products last a long time. But there is always a risk that cast iron will burst.
The leading company in the production of grills promises ten years of flawless operation. A good device is a complex device that requires ideal cleanliness, which sometimes gets boring to maintain (or there is simply no way to do it).
The cost of a quality grill or cast iron grill exceeds the cost of a tandoor.
Expenses include ignition supplies, charcoal (branded models require branded fuel), cleaning brushes, and cleaning compounds.
The tandoor needs nothing but fuel!
The service life of a ceramic kiln, which is made from a special mixture of kaolin and fireclay clay, is unlimited. The only requirement for the first kindling is smooth heating to operating temperature. Like all massive physical bodies, the tandoor warms up gradually.
The appearance of hairline thermal seams is also inevitable. They form just upon first use, but disappear after cooling. No need to worry! The clay vessel is tightly squeezed by a metal frame - it cannot burst or crumble.
Tandoor maintenance comes down to keeping the outer surface clean. It is mobile and fits in the trunk of a car. It doesn’t get smeared with soot, and ash doesn’t fall out of it.
Mistakes that many people make
From all of the above it is clear that the construction of a tandoor is a very delicate and specific process. And most likely, not everyone gets it right the first time. Main errors that may occur:
- Incorrect clay mixing. And the point is not at all about kneading it correctly and standing it, it’s about the proportions relative to the fat content of the mixture. Even a slight deviation can cause cracks to appear, which is very undesirable for a tandoor. Unfortunately, there is no exact recipe in the world, since most experienced stove makers in eastern countries keep it a closely guarded secret. The mixture should, in fact, be made up in certain proportions, according to the consistency of the clay that will be used in the work. The same rule applies in the construction of a tandoor.
- For example, with a furnace seam of 3-5 mm, small errors are possible, and the resulting cracks can be repaired during operation. In principle, mistakes in preparing a solution specifically for the tandoor can negate not a day, but dozens of days of painstaking work.
- For those who are completely far from the construction business, it is better to ask more experienced craftsmen, preferably a stove maker, about all the nuances of mixing clay mortar.
Construction methods
According to Central Asian belief, a tandoor is not built, but sculpted. Special kaolin clay is used as a material for modeling. It is mined in Akhangaran, a small town in Uzbekistan. To prevent the oven from cracking, a little sheep wool is added to the clay. To make a tandoor with your own hands, following the technology, you need to stock up on time and patience.
The exact recipe for preparing a clay batch is not reliably known to anyone - real masters keep it in the strictest confidence. Those who plan to build it at home should experiment or hire experienced Uzbek craftsmen.
How to install a barbecue area in the country
The barbecue area is a favorite place for the whole family to relax, of course, if it is properly equipped. Possible options:
- Open area - a spacious open-air area.
- Closed - is something like an outdoor room, comes with a canopy and a roof. The role of walls can be performed by wooden slats or curtains.
- Universal – frame stationary and portable options. The frame materials are metal or wood.
- A patio is a courtyard closed from prying eyes that looks like an open room or veranda, one wall of which is adjacent to a residential building.
The first thing you must do is to choose the right location for the barbecue or tandoor, taking into account the size of the site, the proximity of the site to the house, and the quality of the surface. If there is little space, you can opt for a compact corner gazebo; for spacious areas, a large barbecue area consisting of several valances (gazebo, barbecue, etc.) is ideal.
A fence is used to separate the barbecue area - it can be wooden, forged metal or live. Don’t forget to clear the area or plant it with green grass.
Features of accommodation
The tandoor is installed in a barbecue area or gazebo. Let's look at the features of each option.
In the gazebo
A gazebo is the most popular option for arranging a recreation area. A budget solution is a fabric tent or a table with a canopy; more beautiful and durable solutions are wooden and wrought-iron houses; structures that “last forever” are usually made from brick. Read more about the technology of building a brick gazebo here.
If you make the right brick tandoor, you can cook food in it for 6 hours after lighting (this is how long a good stove keeps warm).
For those who plan to barbecue, it would be better to stay in a brick building - you can install both a traditional stove and a tandoor in it without worrying about fire safety. If the gazebo with barbecue and tandoor is completely enclosed, consider a system for removing smoke.
Turkish oven as part of the grill area
The most important thing in arranging a barbecue area is the right choice of location. Experts recommend stopping in areas that are securely closed from prying eyes and located deep in the garden. Read more about setting up a barbecue area at your dacha here.
The ideal place for a barbecue area is close to a fountain, pond, or rose garden.
Consider the location of the hearth and table, taking into account the wind rose - this way smoke and soot will not come towards you while you relax.
Do not forget that the barbecue area is a fire, so it should be located at a sufficient distance from trees, playgrounds and wooden fences.
The area can be open (with a light canopy over the table) or closed (glazed, with a roof). Please note that in a closed pavilion you need a high-quality smoke exhaust system. Well, the heart of the grill area will be the cooking fireplace. In addition to a fireplace, portable barbecue and garden fireplace, it can be a tandoor. Its main advantage is its versatility in terms of cooking and economical fuel consumption.
