Hello all!

[Khalsarule]

Hello again!

I hope everyone had a great grilling weekend...I had to squeeze in a quick cooking session Sunday night,just some wings on the grill.. wife had made arrangements for my weekend that required me being away from home:(

Anyway for those that are interested I will try to give a quick overview of tandoori basics..

Let me be the first to say I do not advocate one Q style over another that's like saying chicken's better than beef. Completely pointless. I love all Q and sometimes nothing but low and slow will hit the spot and sometimes I hanker for the singed smokiness of the tandoor and other time's it has to be the grill. What is great is applying the knowledge and techniques from one style of cooking to another, marinade injected Balinese spiced chicken or pork shoulder with a mediterranean rub both cooked in the tandoor as example. Their is a uncommon tradition of flavouring the smoke in tandoori cooking, I have used wood pellets in combination with a very simple marinade to good effect. The point is that there are many possibilities.

The tandoor cook's in almost the opposite way to the smoker, the very high temperatures, around 400 C, blast the meat with intense radiant and convection heat this causes the marinade and juices to drop down onto the coals and send's up smoke which flavours whatever is on the skewer, the skewer itself is heating so the food is being cooked from the inside at the same time.I would say that the key to good Q is always preparation but this is even more so when it come's to food cooked in the tandoor, intense heat and quick cooking time's mean it has to be properly tenderised and marinated sometimes requiring a three-four stage process over a number of day's. Having said that if you get into brining for smoking it can be days of effort too, I suppose its a labour of love to want to produce a better result every time.

It could be said that the most important aspect of the prep for good tandoori is the tenderising process, its a sad fact that a lot of commercially available tandoori food doesn't have this done this properly..I have seen pre-deep fried meat that is then cooked in the tandoor to save time. The fact is that it takes time, knowledge and effort and a lot of restaurants/take away's lack one, the other or in some cases, all three! Its also fair to say that a lot of them have gotten away with selling poor tandoori food for such a long time its just the accepted norm...anyhoo enough restaurant bashing..

Because the tenderising process is such an important aspect, the tandoor chef would have a number of options which can be used on their own or in combination depending on the meat or recipe. Basically there are two groups that work in this process, acids and enzymes. As example raw papaya gives us the enzyme papain which breaks down protein, you may find it easier to buy pineapple which has a similar enzyme called bromalein there are others. The other group is the acids. Most often seen used is yoghurt, its active ingredient being lactic acid (the yoghurt itself is prepared in at least three different forms to suit specific recipes) then there is the citric acid of lemon's and limes and the acetic acid of vinegar. As I mentioned it is not uncommon to employ a number of different tenderisers at different point's of the whole marinating process.

Either after or during the tenderising process you would introduce the other flavours like onion, ginger, garlic and chillies almost always in their raw pureed form. In combination with these we would find the spices, which are too numerous to list here. Many you would know but there are a few you may be unfamiliar with.

These spices are best bought whole and ground at home after heating and cooling in a coffee grinder. Another important ingredient in a lot of recipes are herb's like coriander, fenugreek and mint. Flours also play a part in some recipes as well, both for flavouring and texture these include wheat, chick pea and cornflour. For some recipes these are used to create a 'bark' like outer surface to the meat. Some other preparations call for things like dried flower petals, asafoetida(a dried tree sap),saffron,dried mango powder, seed's(whole,crushed,pasted and powdered) cheese and a variety of nuts used whole crushed and as a paste.

The oils and fat's used for basting and marinating are again numerous and used specifically in different recipes for flavour these include ghee(clarified butter), groundnut oil and mustard oil amongst others.

Another very important aspect of tandoori cooking is the finishing masala. These are ground spice blend's that are made to compliment the original marinading ingredients. These are sprinkled on top of the finished dish and there are dozens of different concoctions. This step is almost always omitted when you visit a restaurant in the UK.

If anyone has any specific questions, please ask and I will do my best to answer. If anyone is interested in the actual cooking process, I could give a overview on that.

Its great to see the interest in the tandoor as a cooker and its with this in mind that I feel I should declare a interest. In my first post I did allude to me pursuing a business interest involving grilling. I don't want to use this space to advertise or plug what I am considering and will try to word what I write very carefully. Should admin not be happy with any part please feel free to delete the entire post or edit as you see fit.

As I mentioned I have been around tandoors and tandoori cooking most of my life and have owned a number of traditional tandoors. The restaurant style units are simply not suitable for the domestic user. Weighing 150Kg plus they take a lot of energy to get going and require a good deal of TLC.

Recently I have noticed a smaller version of the traditional tandoor advertised on ebay and elsewhere these again are very unwieldy often weighing in excess of 80kg, they take up to two hours to come up to operating temperature retain that optimum temperature for only 40 minutes or so and the clay liner is very susceptible to damage. The heating and cooling process requires care to avoid cracking and storage in the winter month's requires care. Its important to note the clay add's nothing to the flavour, the unique tandoori taste is a result of the searing temperature and self basting smoke.

Although I had a couple of tandoors at the time (one small gas one bought in India and a small one of the ebay variety..i had a restaurant unit in my garden for many years but it was just overkill for anything other than a large party) I noticed a unit in around 2001 that was being advertised in the UK as a modern take on the tandoor.

It had been designed by a tandoori loving British engineer who wanted to re-create the tandoori dishes he loved at home. It weighed 15kg, came up to operating temperature in half an hour, was made of cast aluminium so had neither the heating, cooling, curing or storage issues. To boot it was fully portable breaking down into two pieces.

I bought it more out of curiosity and wasn't expecting too much. In short it did as good a job as any tandoor I have ever used, its only drawback was that you could not cook breads inside it.

So impressed were people that saw it that I ended up becoming something of an unofficial sales guy, selling to friends and friends of friends and ...you get the idea. Anyway in around 2004 they stopped production and I could never understand why? I did at various times make enquiries as to what had happened but always came to a dead end.Coming to the point...I recently managed to contact one of the patent holders and very long story short there may be a deal to restart production.

Our current situation is that if we were to give the nod now, we wouldn't see units delivered until around September..my thinking is that although the tandoor is a all year round cooker most people buying something like this would look to purchase in the summer. So at the moment I am leaning towards waiting until next year...I would really appreciate any opinions that you guys may have with regard to this..

Admin. I hope I haven't breached any rules. I intentionally left out brand names and other references and as you will have read from the post the situation is far from solid so advertising at this stage would be very premature. If you are not happy with this in anyway please delete or edit. I joined the forum because I was looking to order a new smoker, I just thought It was best for me to declare the potential interest now, it may never happen!

BTW AWG I haven't forgotten about pic's I will post some up soon.. I will post pics of my OTHER tandoor not the one that I may have a future business interest in.

[Steve]

HI,

No rules broken but thank you for being courteous enough to ask. We don't accept people using the forum purely for self promotion but we are promoting all forms of BBQ and alfresco cooking. The guys on here are all interested in Tandoori cooking and many of us would be interested in your product should it come to market.

In short feel free to post about it, particularly if you have pictures. If we feel it starts treading into the realm of advertising, we'll have a quiet word via the pm system. I would suggest that you start a new thread under Inventor's corner though to make it easier for people to find.

Good luck with the Tandoor, I'll probably be one of your customers if you do get it to market

[esselle]

and me

[Khalsarule]

Hi Steve,

Thank's for clarifying the situation. I will start a new thread on the inventor's corner should anyone like to know more...I would appreciate any thoughts anyone might have regarding a September 2010 release as opposed to summer 2011?

Other than that guy's I won't mention it again here but if there are general tandoori questions etc..please feel free to ask and If I can help, I will be happy to

[Khalsarule]

Just bough the excel with an extra stacker, was wondering does anyone use one of these with two extra stackers...4 in all?

Also bought a new toy from ebay. A remote food thermometer. Its in the States but should get to me in a week or so. Never used a thermometer before, tend to rely on instinct but seemed like a great little toy. It transmits over a 100 feet radius and has a number of different meat and 'doneness' settings. Put the bleeper in your pocket, enjoy your beer and wait for the bleep..magic!

Talking of toy's. I have been using a electric charcoal starter for the past five or six years does anyone have one of these and a chimney starter? How do they compare?

[Neil]

Hi Khalsarule,
I think remote food thermometers are a must I have 2 lots of them . makes it easier to check your temp of your q and meat without leaving your chair (or Beer) .
Ive never used an eletric charcole starter but I think the chimney does just fine....it does take a while to get the charcole going but Im not normally in a rush when BBQing

[Khalsarule]

Hi Neil,

Thermometer seems like a good buy then...Excel turned up today!! Good timing bought a pack of ribs from costco yesterday..I cannot remember whether I had to do a dry run in the brinkmann smoker to burn off residue..is this necessary with the excel? Just going to go with charcoal for now but need to order some heat beads, sharpish

[Neil]

Hi Khalsarule,

Sorry for the late reply how were the ribs?
I would say you need to do a dry run in the excel to begin seasoning it and burn off anything unwanted in the q!
I used heat beads at the Competition this weekend, for grilling I thin they are great, but in a smoker I wont use them again. they run to hot and its very difficult to control the temperature, We (Myself and steve) tend to like using restaurant grade charcoal

[Khalsarule]

Hi Neil,

Sorry been away from the forum for a bit. Did the ribs on the rotisserie in the end with a peri-peri rub..very nice too! Excel is still in it's box but I am thinking this weekend is a good one to bolt it together and get it going..made another impulse purchase on Thursday(wife not best pleased) Was in Costco and they were flogging off one of their last display BBQ's a gas Leisuregrow 600 for £199 plus vat came to £232....still pretty good value I thought, have seen these on the web for about £600! Really solid bit of kit, excellent big chunky stainless steel grill's with 4 burners and a side burner. It's my first gas fired flat bed BBQ so am looking forward to trying it out. If I don't like it I thought I could always sell it on(which is what I said to the missus:)

On the charcoal front came across 10kg bag's of 'Chickadee Maine' brand hardwood lump from Argentina, very big peices. Not yet used but thought I would try it over the weekend..bought two bag's for £6.29 each wh5ch thought was a good price, if its good I think I will stock up.