Tandoor Cooking Principles

Clay ovens of tandoor shape have been used in the Indus Valley for over 4,000 years — among the oldest continuously used cooking vessels on earth. The specific North Indian tandoor cooking tradition was formalised and popularised through the Mughal court kitchens of Delhi and Lahore. The restaurant popularisation of tandoori chicken in post-partition Delhi (at Moti Mahal restaurant, credited to Kundan Lal Gujral) made tandoor cooking globally known.

The tandoor — a vertical clay oven reaching 350–500°C — cooks through multiple simultaneous mechanisms: radiant heat from the clay walls, convective heat from the burning charcoal at the base, and the direct contact of the skewered meat with the intensely hot internal surface. The result is impossible to replicate exactly in a conventional oven: a charred, smoky exterior produced by the radiant heat while the interior is cooked perfectly by the intense convection. The characteristic charred-edge, juicy interior of correctly cooked tandoori chicken is a product of these specific physics.

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