How to choose Curry cookware?

Pots needed to Indian foods vary in shape and materials depending on use

Usage

1. Most of the curries start out by sautéing onions, garlic, ginger, and spices. The sautéing is done at high heat. Sometimes, it has to heat oil to reach smoking point, a need when cooking with Mustard seed oil.
2. Most of the curries have tomatoes, lime juice, mango powder, or tamarind. These are all acids.
3. The curries are typically cooked from 20 to 30 minutes at low to medium heat.

The shape

The shape of Karahi is quite suitable to cook over the flames of a Choolah or Bhatti. This shape is very inefficient to cook over electric or gas range.
A sauté pan is ideal to cook curries. The sides of Sauté pan are straight 2 ½ to 4" deep with flat bottom surface. This allows more food to be in direct contact with hot surface for sautéing Masala. The straight edge also accommodates more food than the frying pan.

Larger sauté pans are called brazier pans. For large quantity, chicken fryers, Dutch oven, or French oven may
be used. To bake Biryani French oven may be very useful.

Material

Cookware is available in many materials .

I recommend Stainless steel ( How to choose Stainless steel Flatware and cookware ) 18/10 with heavy bottom, or as an alternate an Aluminum pan with good PTFE coating such as T-Fal.

For dry cooking a cast iron sauté pan should be used.