Handi

A round-bellied pot with a lid: curries and dum cooking that want steam more than a sear.

Also called handi pot · From North India and Pakistan

A round copper-bottomed handi with its lid ajar on a fragrant curry and a few cardamom pods.

The journey

A handi is a pot that closes on itself — a rounded clay or metal belly, a tight lid, sometimes sealed with dough for dum. North Indian and Pakistani kitchens still reach for it when a korma or a biryani should perfume the room instead of reducing to a fry.

A karahi is for high heat. A handi is for the hour after.

Bread wheat — the breads that scoop what a handi slowly steams. — Franz Eugen Köhler, Köhler's Medizinal-Pflanzen (1887) · Public domain. Source

In the kitchen

Brown first in a wider pan if you need to, then finish in the handi with a lid. Dough-seal for dum. Rest before opening.

Indian and Pakistani volumes treat this shape as assumed. A Dutch oven is the honest substitute.

Used in these ComidaTime kitchens

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