Ron Levy never intended to become a tandoor mogul.

In fact, he had never heard of tandoors - Indian clay cooking vessels - until 1986, when a New York gallery exhibited his two-meter pots, inspired by amphorae on Crete. A man with an Indian accent called, asking if Mr. Levy, a ceramic artist, could make a large pot with a tapered mouth, no bottom and no glaze: a tandoor.

After it was installed at a New York restaurant , word spread through the Indian community, and orders began to pile up.

“It came to the point where I had to stop doing my ceramic artwork, and focus on tandoors full time,” Mr. Levy, 63, recalled.

He converted his New York studio into a tandoor factory. Over the past 30 years, he has built more than 2,000 for restaurants across North America, and as far away as Mexico, Belize and Fiji.

“Coming from a fine arts background, it was very satisfying to make something so functional ,” Mr. Levy said. “I think of it as ceramics that feeds the body, in addition to soothing the soul.”

Now he has developed a tandoor for home use, the Homdoor. It starts at $1,200.

One of them sits just outside his studio on Islamorada in the Florida Keys, where he now lives.

Michael Ledwith, the chef of Hungry Heron Catering nearby, recently threaded spice-crusted rectangles of steak onto metal skewers. The beef came out of the tandoor’s blast-furnace heat with an explosively flavorful crust and uncommonly succulent center.

The traditional tandoor was typically an unfired vessel, the clay walls strengthened with straw and animal hair.

“It was very unsanitary,” Mr. Levy said, adding that ovens shipped to the United States “often arrived from India broken, or would crack with extended use.”

His first innovation was to fashion the body from a blend of earthenware and stoneware, the latter for its ability to withstand high heat without cracking. For porosity (an essential quality so that flatbreads can cling to the inner walls), he added finely ground fired clay. For insulation and strength, he developed a clay and vermiculite mixture that could be baked onto the exterior.

Finally, he devised a sturdy stainless steel housing.

“We’ve been using Ron’s tandoors for the last 20 years,” said Vicky Vij, an owner of Bukhara Grill and Dawat in Manhattan. “They outlast any Indian clay tandoor. They’re masterpieces.” After the pots are formed, each is turned on a giant wheel to smooth the interior. The tandoors are dried, then baked at 1,100 degrees Celsius for seven hours. The process takes about two weeks.

The tandoor may have originated in Rajasthan, India, where archeologists have found tandoor remains dating from 2600 B.C. - about the same time as the pyramids. The first tandoors were used to bake flatbread, a tradition that survives in Indian roti, Afghan naan and Turkmen chorek.

The tandoor is the preferred barbecue pit throughout Central and South Asia and the Caucasus region. Iranians call it tanoor; Uzbeks, tandyr; Azerbaijanis, tandir; Armenians, tonir; and Georgians, tone. But the center of tandoori cooking is Punjab. The tandoor’s shape, a cylinder with sloped walls, has remained essentially unchanged for 5,000 years.

Despite its simplicity, it produces startlingly sophisticated results.

According to Mr. Levy, tandoor cooking uses four distinct techniques. Direct heat rises from the charcoal, akin to grilling. The hot clay walls cook bread, similar to skillet-roasting. Radiant heat produces results similar to convection baking. And smoke adds fragrance and flavor.

Because of its design - a vent at the bottom draws air, and the inward slope of the mouth traps the heat - a tandoor can reach 260 to 400 degrees Celsius . Mr. Levy uses a propane burner that can heat ceramic briquettes ; the Homdoor, available at homdoor.com, also burns charcoal.

The final challenge was production. Mr. Levy made his commercial tandoors in small batches as orders arrived. His business plan for the Homdoor calls for 500 units to be built the first year. Last year, he joined forces with a ceramics company in Uhrichsville, Ohio.

The company has built 50 Homdoors. Mr. Levy was so pleased with the result that all of his tandoors are now made in Ohio.

Madhur Jaffrey, the actress and Indian cooking authority, had never heard of a tandoor growing up in Delhi. When she discovered tandoori chicken, robustly seasoned and dyed orange with food coloring, it was a revelation.

“It was totally exotic - meat cooked to order for just a few minutes,” she recalled. “We Indians were so used to cooking meat to death.”


By STEVEN RAICHLEN