Commercial Kitchen Equipment Guide for Curry Houses

The tandoor: your single most important purchase

Nothing else in a curry house kitchen defines the food the way a tandoor does. It is the clay-lined charcoal or gas oven that cooks naan, tandoori chicken, seekh kebabs and tikka at roughly 350 to 480 degrees Celsius, and no conventional oven replicates the blistered char and smoke it produces. When choosing one, the two big decisions are fuel and shape. Charcoal tandoors give the authentic flavour that many customers come for, but they need lighting well ahead of service and produce more waste heat. Gas tandoors light in minutes, hold temperature more predictably and suit sites where a slow charcoal burn is impractical. Many established houses run charcoal with a gas assist to get the best of both.

Size matters more than people expect. A drum with a 20 to 24 inch internal diameter handles a busy weekend of naan and skewers; anything smaller becomes a bottleneck the moment two orders of bread land together. Insist on a properly seasoned clay pot and ask the supplier how the clay is cured, because a poorly fired pot will crack within months. Sit the tandoor on a heat-insulated base and never against a stud wall.

The bhuna range and burner power

Curry cookery lives on the burner. Individual dishes are finished to order in a karahi over a high, fast flame, so a curry house range needs far more power than a standard catering hob. Look for open-burner or 'bhuna' ranges rated around 5 to 9 kW per burner, well above the 3 to 4 kW of a typical commercial hob. A four to six burner bank lets a single chef finish multiple dishes in parallel during a rush.

• Cast-iron pan supports that take the weight and heat of a steel karahi without warping.
• Pilot lights or piezo ignition on every burner so nothing is relit mid-service.
• A separate stock or 'boiler' burner for the base gravy that underpins most menu dishes.

Because these burners are gas-hungry, your gas supply and meter must be sized correctly. Undersized pipework starves the burners and you lose the ferocious heat the cooking depends on.

Bulk cooking: base gravy, rice and dal

British curry house menus are built on the pre-cooked base gravy method, where a large pot of onion-heavy sauce is prepared each morning and portioned into individual dishes on order. That workflow needs serious bulk capacity: a large stockpot burner, deep aluminium or stainless pots of 30 litres and up, and a stick blender powerful enough to smooth the gravy. Rice is best handled with a dedicated commercial rice boiler or large capacity rice cooker so basmati is ready in batches rather than tying up a burner. A tilting bratt pan is a worthwhile upgrade for high-volume sites, letting you build dal, keema or bulk sauces and then pour off cleanly.

Refrigeration, marination and cold storage

Tikka and tandoori items marinate for hours, often overnight, so cold storage is not an afterthought. Plan for enough refrigerated space to hold marinating meats separately from raw prep and cooked items, and keep raw and ready-to-eat clearly segregated to satisfy your Environmental Health Officer. A walk-in cold room pays for itself in a busy operation; smaller sites can combine upright fridges, an under-counter prep fridge on the line, and a chest freezer for portioned meat and naan dough. Every unit needs a reliable thermometer, and you should log temperatures as part of your food safety records.

Extraction, gas safety and ventilation

The heat and smoke a curry kitchen throws off make ventilation a legal and practical necessity, not a luxury. A tandoor in particular produces intense radiant heat and combustion fumes, so it needs a properly designed canopy and often its own dedicated flue. Your extraction canopy should cover the full cook line with adequate airflow and grease filters that can be removed and cleaned. Under gas safety rules, commercial catering gas work must be carried out by a Gas Safe registered engineer holding the correct commercial catering tickets, and interlock systems that shut off the gas if extraction fails are commonly required. Build a ductwork deep-clean schedule into your maintenance calendar, because grease-laden curry house ducting is a genuine fire risk.

The smaller kit that keeps service moving

Beyond the headline machines, a curry house runs on well-chosen small equipment. Heavy steel karahis in several sizes, long-handled spoons and skewers for the tandoor, a spice grinder or wet grinder for fresh masalas, and plenty of gastronorm containers for portioned sauces and garnishes. A hot cupboard or bain-marie keeps rice and sundries at safe holding temperature during service. If you do a large takeaway trade, a dedicated pass and packing station with a heat sealer or sturdy container stock stops the dine-in line clogging up.

Buying new, buying used and servicing

Kitting out a kitchen is a large outlay, so be strategic about where you spend. Buy the tandoor and burners new or from a reputable specialist, since these are the items whose failure closes your kitchen. Stainless benching, sinks, shelving and basic refrigeration can often be bought used or ex-catering at a fraction of new cost, provided you inspect seals, motors and gas components carefully. Whatever you buy, factor in servicing: annual gas safety checks, extraction cleaning, refrigeration servicing and tandoor re-claying over time. A cheap machine with no service support becomes expensive the first weekend it fails during a full book. Choose suppliers who stock spares and can attend quickly, because in this trade downtime is lost covers.