The egg-shaped grill isn’t exactly a new concept – we’ve seen it used by companies like Big Green Egg and Kamado Joe extensively in their designs. However, none of the commercial egg-shaped grills we’ve seen are meant to mimic the function of the traditional tandoor oven from Western and Southern Asia, which is what sets the Doori apart.
That’s right, this egg-shaped oven is meant to replicate the cooking style of tandoor ovens, where fuel burns at the bottom and cooks food held on long skewers that run across the height of the container. This allows food to cook without having to turn over like you need to do when using grills or rotisseries, making it a more convenient alternative for all sorts of barbecue dishes.
The Doori is a freestanding cooker that looks like a large, all-metal version of those Big Green Egg grills you will occasionally see in people’s backyards. Except, of course, this has no grates, so you can’t use it for traditional grilling. Instead, it has a bare cavernous interior that’s designed for traditional tandoori-style cooking. Inside, it has a flat bottom where you can put your fuel, with the outfit recommending you use either pre-lit charcoal (just light them up in a tray elsewhere) or instant charcoal, since you don’t want to reach deep into the container just to light it up. While preheating the oven, you can check the integrated temperature gauge on the exterior to see exactly when it reaches your desired temperatures.
Along the edges at the top opening are six grooves sized to fit the included skewers, essentially giving you a designated spot to place them to ensure proper cooking positions. According to the outfit, the oven’s egg-like shape encourages heat to rise up and flow all around the skewers, ensuring any food held in them will cook evenly, while the enclosed design keeps heat inside to cook them as quickly as possible. The skewers are designed to touch all the way down to the charcoal bed, by the way, which should heat up the metal skewers to help cook food from the inside.
The Doori should be able to cook any type of dish you can make on a skewer, so you can use it for roasts, kebabs, and all sorts of other dishes. According to the outfit, each of the metal skewers can hold up to half a chicken each, allowing you to cook three whole chickens at a time. There’s no word on whether you cook flatbread on it like they do on an actual tandoor, so we’re guessing it doesn’t work efficiently for that, although we imagine a bunch of people will try anyway soon as they get around to playing with this.
From what we can tell, this is strictly for tandoor-style cooking, although we imagine they can expand it for more traditional grilling down the line, since a grate seems like it will fit nicely once you take out the lid and top-half sections of the oven. Other features include a removable ash tray, removable feet (so you can break it apart and tuck it away), aluminum construction for the oven, stainless steel construction for the legs and fuel tray, and a total weight of 33 pounds.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for the Doori. You can reserve a unit for pledges starting at $517.