Shaan 32" Commercial Gas Tandoor Clay Oven — ETL Certified

The 32 inch is the size most Indian restaurants in the United States end up buying, and the one we sell the most of. It is the point where the tandoor stops limiting the menu: enough wall to keep naan going through a dinner rush while chicken tikka, seekh kebab and paneer cook on skewers alongside.

A tandoor does not cook with flame. The burner heats a 2 inch stone clay body until the clay itself is the heat source, and food cooks against radiant heat off the wall — which is why naan bakes stuck to the side and a thin tikka comes off in minutes. Thermal mass is what separates one tandoor from another, and triple-layer insulation holds that heat in the clay rather than in your kitchen, so the oven recovers between batches instead of sagging each time the mouth opens.

Made in the United Kingdom by Tandoori Oven Ltd. Nishi Enterprise Inc is the authorized distributor for the United States and Canada and stocks the wear parts — burners, safety valves, thermocouples, baffle plates, lava rock, repair clay — in South Plainfield, New Jersey.

Features

• The size most US Indian restaurants choose — continuous naan through service alongside a full skewer load
• 2 inch stone clay body — the thermal mass that gives a tandoor its recovery between batches, rather than a thin liner that cools when the mouth opens
• Triple-layer insulation — keeps the heat in the clay and off your line
• Metal ring reinforcement with a hardened inner surface — the clay is braced against the thermal cycling that cracks unreinforced pots
• Gas safety valve with thermocouple and pilot igniter — the burner shuts off on flame loss
• Natural gas as supplied, convertible to LP — one model covers a fixed kitchen or a propane site
• Stainless steel shell on 4 inch swivel casters — rolls out for cleaning behind the line
• Parts held in New Jersey — a failed thermocouple is a next-day part, not a container from overseas
• Supplied with a naan bread pad, a stainless mouth cover and 1 lb of maintenance clay

Certification

Most commercial kitchen equipment sold in the United States is certified as a matter of course and nobody makes much of it. Tandoors were the exception. For years they arrived as an import category with no gas listing and no sanitation listing, and owners found out at inspection rather than at purchase. In January 2009 Shaan became the first tandoor oven in the world to earn both ETL certification for gas safety and ETL Sanitation certification — less as a selling point than to make the tandoor a piece of equipment a US kitchen could install without an argument.

Both listings are current and public: the ETL Listed Mark to ANSI Z83.11 and the cETL Listed Mark to CAN/CSA-1.8 for gas safety, and the ETL Sanitation Listed Mark to NSF/ANSI 4. They are searchable in Intertek's Directory of Listed Products under Tandoori Oven Ltd or Nishi Enterprise Inc. The gas listing answers the fire marshal; the sanitation listing answers the health department.

Installation

The oven must sit under a Type I commercial exhaust hood per the International Mechanical Code and NFPA 96, with the gas connection made by a licensed installer under NFPA 54 and a pressure regulator depending on your supply. Observe the clearances to combustible material given in the manual and your local code. Delivery is freight only; book a liftgate if you have no dock, and check the crated dimensions against your doorways first.

Specifications

No warranty is offered on the clay pot. Hairline crazing is a natural characteristic of fired clay under repeated heat cycling and does not affect cooking; the maintenance clay supplied with the oven is for exactly that.