Milk Kadai (Parchi): built for exactly one job

Most cookware is a compromise across several tasks. The milk kadai is not. It exists to reduce milk without catching, and every decision in it serves that.

The failure it is designed against

Milk contains lactose and proteins that behave badly on hot metal. Proteins coagulate and stick; lactose caramelises and then burns — both at the metal surface, well below the temperature at which the bulk liquid boils.

So the temperature that matters is not the milk's. It is the hot spot on the base.

Get a scorch and you do not lose part of the batch. The burnt flavour goes through all of it, and you lose the lot.

Why 6 mm, with no lighter option

On a thin base, the region directly over the burner can run 60–80 °C hotter than the metal at the rim. Milk on that ring scorches while milk two inches away is fine.

Thick plate conducts that concentrated input sideways through the thickness before it reaches the cooking surface, so the surface arrives at a much more uniform temperature.

Six millimetres is where that becomes reliable for milk. We do not offer 3 mm because a 3 mm milk kadai would be a cheaper product that fails at its only job — and it would come back.

The shape

Thirteen sizes from 24 to 48, with diameters from 22 inches up to 46 inches. Wide, open and comparatively shallow.

That geometry is chosen for evaporation. Reducing milk means removing water, and evaporation happens at the surface — so surface area is the limiting factor. A tall narrow vessel of the same volume would take far longer and spend that extra time with the base under heat, which is exactly the exposure you are trying to minimise.

The open shape also gives room to work. Khoya-making requires continuous scraping across the whole base, and you need to get a flat-edged spatula into the corner where wall meets base.

Weights to plan around

Six millimetres of steel at these diameters is heavy. The chart runs from 14.4 kg at size 24 to 56 kg at size 48, empty, before any milk.

That is worth planning for. A size 48 is not a vessel one person lifts off a fire, and the size chart is there so you can make that decision before it arrives rather than after.

Working with it

1. Start clean and dry. Residue from the previous batch is where the next one starts sticking.
2. Moderate the flame as it thickens. The same flame puts more heat into less liquid as water leaves.
3. Scrape the base, not the middle. A flat-edged spatula, into the corners.
4. Do not walk away at the end. The last fifteen per cent of a reduction is where nearly every failure happens.

If it does catch, do not attack it — water, baking soda, a simmer and time will lift it. The method is in removing burnt-on food.