Naan, kulcha and other oven-baked flatbreads are delicious, but to get them you usually have to go out or order delivery from a spot with a nice tandoor oven. If you have even a little backyard or patio space, you can make your own with a bucket, some terracotta pots, some charcoal and a little elbow grease. You’ll have the inside of your backyard tandoor oven covered in baking bread in no time.
Over at Food52, writers Anum and Liyna walk through how they built a backyard oven using a metal bucket, some terracotta pots, some sand to insulate the sides, charcoal to cook and the bread. The video below shows how the oven is assembled, but if you want to see the delicious results, check out this video.
The construction looks easy enough, and all of the parts used are definitely available at your local hardware store. You’ll just need to put in the elbow grease to put holes in the bucket, cut off the bottom of one of the terra cotta pots, and then put the whole thing together.
Still, if you love naan — or any other dish you can cook in a tandoor oven — it’s worth the afternoon or so you’ll put into assembling the whole thing and setting it up. What do you think? Too much work when you could call for delivery, or a great way to bring an otherwise huge oven home to the backyard barbecue? Let us know in the comments.
Liyna and Anum’s Big Feast: Building the Tandoor Oven [Food 52]
This story has been updated since its original publication.
Comments
One response to “Build A DIY Tandoor Oven In Your Backyard”
While making your own tandoor sounds fun, people should be aware that terracotta flower pots contain toxic chemical that can be released into food cooked in the tandoor. For safety I would recommend buying a home tandoor that is purpose made.
So what is the pot we can use without any toxic chemical in it
Any. I suspect that commercial tandoor oven sellers don’t want you to do it yourself. Just make sure the pot is new so that it hasn’t been exposed to fertiliser or pesticides.
After all, if you can buy the pot to grow food in safely, why can’t you cook in it?