Big Green Egg as a Tandoor Oven?

We decided to try using the Big Green Egg (BGE) as a tandoor oven.

Features of a traditional tandoor

A tandoor is typically a cylindrical clay oven, open on the top. It can be heated by charcoal or gas (in modern versions). It runs at temperatures from 500 to 800 degrees F. Very long skewers of marinated meat are lowered into the oven vertically. Cooking time is quick, usually 8 to 15 minutes. The meat is surrounded on all sides by intense heat which caramelizes the surface, and the quick cooking time minimizes moisture loss. The marinade is not oily enough to drip and cause flames.

Features of the Big Green Egg ceramic cooker

The BGE is one type of ceramic cooker. It can easily attain temperatures of 700 degrees or more if the dome is kept closed. However, it does have a circular vent at the top about 4 inches wide (on the medium, large, and extra large sizes) that can be completely exposed. We decided to see if we could use the top vent hole as a tandoor opening. This would enable us to avoid opening the cooker which would destabilize the temperature and risk flashback each time it was opened (and we don’t want direct flame on the skewers). It would also enable us to do quick doneness checks and remove and reload new skewers easily if we wanted to cook more food.

If it works, the BGE would have a couple advantages over a traditional tandoor oven. Because it lacks the wide open top, it would use far less fuel (charcoal lump) and less steam would escape from the cooker/food, hopefully making the food even more moist. We have noticed that even at our favorite restaurants that do fresh tandoori (not steam table buffets!), that quality can be variable. If the BGE can maintain more consistent temps, we might have more consistent results. Also, regular tandoor ovens can take over an hour to come up to temperature, the BGE attains high temperatures quickly, especially with the top wide open as we will do.

Of course, the small size of the opening is a disadvantage, and even worse, you lose the ability to do traditional naan by slapping it onto the oven walls.

Photos of our attempt

Here’s the skewer going into the BGE. There is an onion at the bottom just to help keep everything from sliding off:

Four skewers loaded up:

A view into top opening — very hot!:

The Finished Product

We lost two the onions inside the cooker; they weren’t for eating anyway. The skewers, two chicken, two beef:

And here’s the final product, plated:

So how was it?

Good and bad. The chicken that was on the ends of the skewers (top and bottom) was excellent. Some of the middle pieces were a little underdone. It was all very moist and nice and crusty on the outside.

Also in the bad category was one casualty: the gasket between the base and the dome lid. It got fried and a small part of it melted as well, detaching from the dome.

Conclusions and plans for next time

We made the mistake of packing the skewer and not allowing space between the pieces. Part of the quick-cooking tandoor method is for the hot skewer to aid in cooking the inside of the chicken. Spacing the chunks may solve the problem of the middle pieces not finishing at the same time as the ends.

We were able to cook more meat at one time than we expected; the small opening won’t be a major limitation, so that’s a plus.

We also started this experiment under the assumption (given that many tandoors are gas) that most of the heat is indirect and we used a placesetter (a ceramic plate that fits in the cooker between the coals and the top of the dome) to avoid direct heating. Looking at pictures of charcoal tandoor ovens, we see that meat does get direct heat from the charcoal. The placesetter directed the heat the sides of the cooker (straight onto the gasket area and up the dome. This likely contributed to frying our gasket. Next time we plan to place a pan deeper in the cooker to hold the ends of the skewers and catch any drippings (limiting flame-ups).

The expected quick startup time, was quick indeed, it took only a few minutes to get up to 700 degrees. This is an advantage of the BGE.

Tags: bge