Garbage Can and Flower Pot Tandoor Oven

Step 10 Bake!

I formed little round loaves, pulled on a fire glove, set a loaf on the glove, sprinkled the loaf with a little water, and slapped the loaf on the side of the pot. After a few minutes I pulled the baked loaf off the pot with long tongs. The loaves are turning out ugly so far, but I imagine I'll get there with time. Yum!

Comments

[ferrous]

You should probably know that you should completely burn off the galvanization from the can before you actually cook in it. If you see that thick, curling white smoke coming from the galvanised parts, don't inhale it! It's poison. This is why welders dont like to work with galvanised metal, and neither should cooks ;)

[justafew]

I would love to get my hands on 2-3 un-galvanised cans for "turkey in a can" right now we are using a very large terracotta pot but it limits the size of the bird we can cook. Can find untainted cans at the hardware store...any thoughts?

[jackhg]

call a galvanizer, who actually dips the steel buckets, maybe they can tell you where to get the cans, they might even have some rusted ones

[chuckr44]

Get a painted bucket at Big Lots, then burn off the paint (build a bon fire around and in it). How's that? But that's only a summer item and they are running out fast.

[fritz.bogott]

I checked what the pit-barbecue folks do. They go to their nearest oil-drum factory and buy a brand-new unused drum. Ask the people at the factory which drum is appropriate for making a grill. I went and bought a thirty-gallon open-head drum today at Consolidated Containers in Minneapolis, http://containerexperts.com. Any big city should have a similar place.

[paddlesport]

Zinc melts at approx. 900 F. Vaporizes at approx. 1200 F. Not likely to occur in any cooking process I am aware of. Bake on!

[fritz.bogott]

I re-thought this from a failure-mode-analysis perspective. While I know empirically that it hasn't gotten that hot so far, I agree that it certainly could, and that the failure condition is unacceptable (and totally unnecessary). I have added a big safety banner to the front page of the instructable and I'm planning to rebuild inside a non-galvanized container. Thank you very much for the safety info.

[ferrous]

Although, I forgot to add that I really like your design otherwise :)

[ferrous]

Actually, there are alot of wood fired pizza ovens that can get to 1000 F and beyond. Its really quite easy for the occasional hot-spot to reach those temperatures. I wouldn't personally use a zinc plated can, is all. That stuff's nasty.

[fritz.bogott]

Yes, I know. The way I built it, the galvanized can does not get above 100DegF because of all the insulation.

[ravvip0]

Hi Fritz, a few things you could try which I've learnt from my dad (he's been in the indian restaurant business for a while) - he uses mallee stump charcoal, but can uses hardwood charcoal like you did in a pinch, the briquettes have some odd chemicals in them which is why things taste funny - also to make your naan breads easier to put on and take off my dad used to make a sugar water solution, soak a towel in it, then spin the towel around inside the oven (which is usually bigger than a pot) so you could could just smear sugar water on the pot, do this a couple of times and you will build up a layer of carbon around the clay (the same idea as a wok) hope this helps your naan!

[threadbare]

That's a great tip about the sugar water!

[ravvip0]

yeah well that style of cooking is pretty old, you'd hope they'd have a good system by now :P

[fritz.bogott]

Thanks! I'll give those things a try!

[colinhorton]

Hardwood charcoal will burn hotter than briquettes and doesn't contain mineralized carbon (coal) as most briquettes do.

[fritz.bogott]

Got it. Thanks!

[wolflore]

This is a great instructable. When I have the space I will give this a go with a big old clay chimney pot. Does the 3" hole at the bottom just aid in the draw of air? In the UK we have some nice garden furnaces - see link. I wonder if these would aid the whole process?

http://www.ukgardensupplies.co.uk/acatalog/fg.html

Thanks a lot!