Buying a pongal pot for Thai Pongal
Clay or brass, size, and when to buy: a short guide to the pot at the centre of the harvest festival.
Why a hand-forged kadai costs ₹1,450
Steel sheet, the smith’s hours, our seasoning and the weight in your hand: what you pay for in an iron kadai.
Iron kadais are sold across India for as little as ₹500, and ours is ₹1,450 for a 10-inch piece. Customers fairly ask what the difference is.
Most cheap kadais are pressed. A machine stamps a thin sheet of iron, often 1.5 to 2 mm, into a bowl shape in seconds. They are light and heat fast, but they also develop hot spots, warp on high heat and lose their seasoning quickly. Ours are hand-forged by a family of smiths we have bought from for forty years. They start with a thick round of iron, heat it in a forge and beat it into shape over a curved anvil, rotating it a little with each blow. A 10-inch kadai takes around two hours of forging and weighs about 2.4 kg, with walls close to 3 mm thick.
The iron itself is about ₹350 of the price, and the smith’s labour, fuel and handles about ₹550. Then comes our part. Every kadai is scrubbed, dried, and seasoned in our back room with four coats of gingelly oil, each baked on over a flame, which takes most of a morning. Seasoning, packing and the care card add around ₹200.
The rest covers freight to Madurai, our rent and our margin. A forged kadai heats evenly, does not warp and, looked after, lasts several generations. A pressed one is perfectly usable, but you may buy three in the time one forged kadai lasts.
