johan

I am thinking of radically changing my cooking layout, and am thinking of using the miele 15" gas wok burner as the centerpiece. I do a lot of wok cooking, but my GE 36" cooktop is not great for this application. I am concerned about flame shape: I really want this to be a focused flame suitable for woks, as a contrast to the unusable wide ring of flame that my existing stove puts out. The GE measures a lot of BTUs, but since the flames shoot out rather than up, only the widest pans capture all of the heat, and this flame pattern is the opposite of the focused heat at the bottom of the wok that you want for proper wokking. Does anyone have the Miele? Can you take a picture of the flame pattern with a wok in place? Any other suggested burners? I am also curious about the wok-mon insert, but that remains kickstarter vaporware for now. Pre-orders only since 2014.

I can only recount my failures... I had read somewhere that icecream was pretty much invisible to microwaves; the idea was that you roll a dollop of something sweet and gooey into a ball of icecream well before-hand, and when it is desert-time, I was going to nuke the icecream and end up with hot fillling inside cold ball. No joy. The icecream melted before the filling got hot. fooey.

More like the miniwok, but It feels stamped. Your points on the stovetop are well taken; I forget that not everyone has gas. I'll give using my sauteuse evasee a try-- never occurred to me. However, now that I'm thinking about it, seems that a wok would likewise be very good at quick evaporation.

First a comment I was suprised that the list slkinsey made for FG didn't include my one time favorite pan: The calphalon 10" or 11" nonstick wok. For anything from reheating left-overs to a quick stirfry (esp when cooking for one) this is the single most versatile pan I own. It does everything but sear steak or boil pasta. I highly recommend it (and it can be had discounted at ~$30). True asian cooks might find that it has too even a heat distribution (it doesn't get the true hot-spot that really high-heat searing needs), but asian supermarkets have cheap woks so that may not matter. then a question What is my cheapo wok made of? The outside is some red enamel, but the inside is rough, like cast iron. However, it is (I would have thought) much too thin and light to be cast iron. It isn't non-stick, as it definitely has stood up to some vigourous scraping with steel brushes. Perhaps it is this porcelain enamel? The best clue I have is that the surface is not smooth, nor regular. It really looks alot like cast iron.

About that onion chopping: I never did understand why horizontal+vertical slices were better than just the significantly simpler wheel-spoke arc cuts. If you make them alternatingly deep and shallow, you get an even size, and since you're always slicing perpendicular to the onion layer, every cut counts. Using h+v slices you'll be be slicing along the layer for a large part of each cut. As for tips: 1) Heat the thai chili-paste and oil over medium heat first, then crank up the heat and add meat before the paste burns. Back down on heat when adding coconut milk. Only tested using gas and a thin-walled wok. 2) heat management in general, actually 3) Tomatoes slice easier drawing the knife towards you. I understand this is the Wrong Way to do it. Haven't sliced my finger off. yet.