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from what Ive seen ( video's ) and read induction tops do not need vents. if there is an over right older one, the oven would need a vent not the top. at my HightEnd store I looked at 30 " blue stars. very nice. the unsealed burners put out 22,000 or so ( don't quote me ) and the rep said used them would melt the built-in hood/microwave. sealed burners are around 19,000 and much easier to clean I think. I can't imagine needing more than that ( just me ) in a home setting. just leave the wok on longer to preheat, or get take-out.

This is a de Longhi electric oven with gas cooktop now nine years old. There is no mains gas here, so it's plumbed into two LPG tanks at the side of the house. I would like the wok burner to be hotter. Other than that, it's a great cooktop. The long burner is good for gravies or a grill pan. The trivets make sliding pots around pretty easy. The oven has had its problems with temperature control. They seem to be fixed after a $250 visit from a tech a month or so ago. There is a largely useless range hood above it. Searing lamb equals smoke detector, if we had a noise detector it would go off too. Next time I would get the motor installed outside, and we've always suspected it vents into the roof cavity.

Ive been looking at ranges recently. Im considering a dual-fuel range ; gas on the top, electric for the oven. Of course, what Id really like is a range with an induction top, not the kind with discrete zones, but a continuous induction surface, sometimes called Vario and a combi-oven doesn't exist. Im not interested in replacing the standard 'hood' which is a microwave built in above the current gas stove that just pulls the warm are out to the kitchen so there are some BTU limits to the gas top so it won't melt the Micro. I don't mind as I don't need a bazillion BTU gas burners for a Wok. sealed burners appeal to me, they have less BTU and are easier to keep clean. the more professional ranges have these in the 19,000 BTU any idea if this is needs a new vetting hood by code ? Miele has a very interesting full electric range w an induction surface ( discrete zones ) but a steam injection feature for the oven for baking bread . Im allergic to contractors so its going to have to be a slide-in 30 " model. as If been meaning to get an electrician in here to add a few more 20 amp circuits to the wall outlets, a 240 V line for the oven is not out of the question. any one have a dual-file range ? any idea on the BTU limit for a vent/micro above the unit ? many thanks

SV is not always the way to go with certain foods and, to me, squid or calamari is one of those foods. I do calamari three different ways: Pressure cooker - http://www.hippressurecooking.com/calamari-in-umido-calamari-tomato-sauce-or-side-dish/ which produces a soft and succulent result. Wok - quick and easy, especially when serving with stir fry veg as well. Grill - this works best with calamari steaks, based with lemon and butter or with other additives such as garlic, chilli - just use your imagination. I do not deep fry calamari but sometimes do pan fry if doing only a small portion. Calamari also makes a lovely salad when mildly pickled.

Trying to finish these today as I have a busy few days coming up. Eight San Jiang - oil tea Time: 3o minutes For the tea: Dried tea laves (about 5 grams in total) 300 ml water For the Glutinous rice: around 0.5 kg dried Glutinous rice. more than 100 ml oil Others: Two bowls (one big, one small) Method: First, you should dry the Glutinous rice, then you can cook it. Put the oil into wok, then fire the dried Glutinous rice, if it looks yellow, then you can put it into the big bowl. Second, clean the wok, after that, put water into it. When the water become boiling, you can put dried tea leaves into the water, then add salt, but you shouldn't add oil. Last but no least, put some fired dried Glutinous rice into the small bowl, then add water tea into it, so you can have it. Sanjjiang (三江, literally "Three Rivers") is a so-called autonomous county in the north of Liuzhou prefecture, bordering Hunan province. It is home to the Dong ethnic minority. Oil tea is a staple there. It is served daily, but also plays a big part in traditional formal welcoming rites. Guests are presented with it and expected to drink/eat at least two bowls. However, good hosts will refill your bowl every time it is empty. If you have had enough, don't empty the bowl! The first time I had it, I thought it was awful, but over the years I have actually developed a taste for it. It is usually served with peanuts as well as the glutinous rice she mentions. Note: "Fired" is a common misspelling of "fried" among Chinese learners of English. By the way, I'm told English is this girl's 4th language.

I was recently asked by a friend to give a talk to a group of around 30 first-year students in a local college - all girls. The students were allowed to present me with a range of topics to choose from. To my joy, No. 1 was food! They wanted to know what is different between western and Chinese food. Big topic! Anyway I did my best to explain, illustrate etc. I even gave each student a home made Scotch egg! Which amused them immensely. Later, my friend asked each of them to write out (in English) a recipe for their favourite Chinese dish. She has passed these on to me with permission to use them as I wish. I will post a few of the better / more interesting ones over the next few days. I have not edited their language, so please be tolerant and remember that for many of these students, English is their third or fourth language. Chinese isn't even their first! I have obscured some personal details. First up: Tomato, egg noodles. Time: 10 minutes Yield: 1 serving For the noodle: 1 tomato 2 egg 5 spring onions For the sauce: 1 teaspoon sesame oil 1 tablespoon sugar ½ teaspoon salt Method: 1. The pot boil water. At that same time you can do something else. 2. Diced tomato. Egg into the bowl. add salt and sugar mixed. Onion cut section. 3. Boiled noodles with water and cook for about 5 minutes. 4. Heat wok put oil, add eggs, stir fry until cooked. Another pot, garlic stir fry the tomato. 5. add some water to boil, add salt, soy sauce, add egg 6. The tomato and egg sauce over noodle, spring onion sprinkled even better. More soon.

Here is tonight's starter. Fresh (live*) shrimp stir fried with sea salt, Sichuan pepper, lime zest and chili flakes. Served with more lime. The main course was pork with fermented black beans which I have posted here at least once before, so won't bore you with again. Not that it wasn't good! *I had an amusing few minutes scrabbling around the kitchen trying to retrieve the more energetic shrimp which sensibly jumped out the wok the second they felt the heat!

Laksa last night - a use up meal with frozen prawns, frozen mussels, some laksa paste from Sainsbury's that has way too little heat for my liking, Thai basil in a jar, straight to wok Pad Thai noodles, chestnut mushrooms, beansprouts, coconut cream thinned down, salad greens and a large amount of fresh coriander. Plus a very large dollop of harissa and a large amount of tabasco to add sufficient heat. Gotta love the saute function

Last night's dinner was a near disaster. I got back late and was tired. I marinated some pork in Shaoxing wine, soy sauce, garlic and chilli then got the rice going in the rice cooker. Or at least I thought I did. About half way through the process, the cooker decided it had had enough and died on me. I hurriedly switched the contents into a pan and finished it off on the stove top (something I haven't done in decades of rice cooker use). I stir fried some cauliflower in one wok while doing the meat in another. As I was serving the cauli, I somehow dropped the emptied pan splashing my foot with hot oil. I was wearing sports shoes which are porous. Ouch! Then the photograph turned out very iffy. The light in my kitchen isn't camera friendly. Still, it tasted just fine.

Finally cooked a meal in my new kitchen. Garlic Chicken with Asparagus. Chicken breast marinated in white wine with garlic (lots) and lemon zest. Coloured the chicken in the wok with olive oil then added the marinade, green chillies, capers, asparagus and scallions. I felt it was drying out too quickly, so added a spash of the wine. I had planned to serve this with couscous, but couldn't find it - so rice. And have leftovers for lunch tomorrow.

I tagged along with my best friend and her husband earlier this year while they shopped for a new oven and range. This Samsung Flex Duo Oven gave me a serious case case of oven envy. I bought the electric version of this 6 years ago when we remodeled our kitchen. I have liked the double oven arrangement, because within limits you can run the two compartments at different temperatures; on the other hand, you can remove the divider and operate the oven as a single standard-sized oven. This new iteration is a significant improvement over mine in two ways: first, the obvious advantage is that it's gas; second; the door now is articulated so that you can just open the top half if you wish. (The middle hinge is operated by a special latch built into the door handle; it's easy to operate but doesn't seem likely to be operated by accident.) Mine has a single door, so you lose heat to both compartments when you just want to check the upper compartment. The range looks like it would be easy to clean and control; it includes a good low-heat simmering burner and a high-heat burner of impressive BTU's. The grate includes a removable wok cradle to hold a round-bottomed wok over the burner. My friends couldn't see themselves using the double oven option, so saved around $1000 by buying the single-chamber version of this unit. They've had their new kitchen for less than a month, but so far they are delighted with their purchase.

This is possibly probably the fastest lunch I know of. Live protein readied to entertain my mouth in less than 5 minutes, including prep*, cooking and plating. Garlic Prawns with Capellini. The pasta takes three minutes, so I start that off, then mince one head of single-headed garlic which I add to a wok with olive oil, salt and chilli flakes. When it comes to a sizzle (almost immediately) add prawns** and stir. If it looks like catching at all, a sprinkling of water (from the pasta pot) is enough to prevent it burning. At three minutes, drain pasta and add to prawns. Make sure all prawns are cooked through and pink. Check seasoning and adjust if necessary. Serve. Eat., * except shopping, of course **I threw on a wok lid at this point as the prawns were still alive and felt there were better places to spend a Saturday afternoon than in a red hot wok, so attempted to jump back out. They soon surrendered.

Tonight (and tomorrow's lunch, I suspect.) I prepared diced chicken breast, green chilli, black olives, shallots, black garlic and capers. The roots and stem ends were cut from the coriander leaf, too. All of this was unceremoniously dumped into a wok with S+P and thrown around until the chicken was all nicely browned. Then the whole lot was transferred to a slow cooker and forgotten about till the smell woke me up. Mise 2 was simple. Some rehydrated dried shrimp, a duck egg and leftover rice deposited in the fridge last night. The rest of the coriander was chopped and added to the chicken, then the rice fried by my usual method. First I fry the egg until it thinks it might solidify but would actually prefer to remain liquid. Some sort of lurid poultry erotica, no doubt. The shrimp were fried just enough for colour then the rice was added. Clumps were broken up. Most people do this by using the wok scoop to 'cut' into the rice and all they get are smaller clumps ad infinitum. No! No! No! Whatever are you thinking of? Use the back of the scoop to press the clumps of rice down onto the base of the wok. They split into separate grains easily. Salt and shichimi togarishi added. Like everyone in China, I don't usually salt rice other than in fried rice and not always then. Here are the plated results. That'll do nicely.

After escaping the cameras from hell, I spot that these two burners are busy with something else. A nearby table sports these fine looking creatures. Yes those carp which I saw being deep fried earlier are also "twice-cooked", this time being finished off in a chilli laden sauce. They smell good with a capital OO. Another wok and burner combo is poaching those second chickens we saw being de-feathered. These are chopped to give us "White Cut Chicken, a Cantonese speciality of poached chicken but also popular here. So, it seems everything is ready. We take our places at random. As a VIP, I am offered a seat at a table inside the house but explain that unlike them (the village leaders) I am a real communist rather than an opportunistic jackass and prefer to sit with the great unwashed masses. Well, of course, I don't. But I do insist on sitting outside ("to take pictures", I say). and the food! Carp Chillis White Cut Chicken Potato. Don't be misled. These are wonderful, but very spicy. This unappetising mud is actually the bamboo tube soup. It looks better in the bowl and tasted just fine, if underwhelming. Neither the bamboo or herb added anything I could detect, so really it was just water and chicken. Still I've had worse. Somehow I managed to miss photographing the kou rou at the table. I certainly ate it and thoroughly enjoyed it. Probably the best I've eaten. although the meat is very fatty, not something I generally like, it wasn't at all greasy. It just melted in the mouth. Also, the taro picks up enough of the fat and cooking juices to be very tasty indeed rather than just starchy as I often find it. It took ages to prepare - days if not weeks of planning then hours of hard work. And we demolished it in twenty minutes or so. The Remains of the Day The Team - Thanks. See you next year!

Hey Kim, thanks for the answer. I am from the netherlands and rural netherlands at that. Probably the most authentic chinese restaurant I been to is Wok to Walk when I was in Amsterdam. Still tasty but still not a noodle soup or something.

@JoNorvelleWalker, We have a Chinese restaurant here within my walking distance that still offers "Fried fish like squirrel tail with sweet and sour sauce". It has gone down in quality, since the original chef opened his own restaurant in Morrisville. Super Wok is still open, but the Yelp stars went down some when this happened. I learned this on Chowhound, but failed to remember where the original chef went, since it couldn't benefit me, as I can't get myself there. I am quite sure that restaurant is great though.

I use my Calphalon Knock-off flat bottomed wok and wooden utensils almost every day. Do they count?

Specific to your black flake problem, it could be that the extra seasoning that you tried didn't adhere properly to the factory seasoning. The few factory finished pieces I have bought over the years, I have ended up stripping and then reseasoning to my process. Different fats will work but you should be aware of their smoke points, and they don't all give same results as far as how durable they are. I prefer using a high smoke point oil, refined grapeseed is usually what I have in house. Many thin coats with long enough between applications to fully polymerize. a CS wok I bought a couple years ago with about 10 or 11 very thin layers

There's a recipe that's done in a wok. I've seen that doing the rounds here. It's maybe the least time-consuming variation I've seen. I liked the method in the recently-released All Under Heaven, though. The book itself is a worthy addition to most anyone's collection, and the pork appealed to adult and child alike. I served leftovers in a sandwich, just as I would with any kind of roast or barbecued meat. It's not like the flavour profile is too far removed from barbecue.

Sounds like a typical asian cookbook (for the locals)! Chilli powder wouldn't be specific - so get one of an appropriate heat level for your tastes. Nyonya cooking likes it HOT! If it isn't hot, then its bland as my Singaporean friend kept reminding me that night at our local Nyonya restaurant. Streak pork = pork belly - ie the meat has streaks of fat through it. Deep frying, the wok method, is very popular. Although, having to wait for the oil to cool down and then poor back into a bottle once cold is a pain. A western deep fryer would be simpler in my books - throw a lid on it and store. I think washing the spices comes down to quality - this day and age I think we're fine. You heat the spices individually before grinding to release the aromas. I normally heat on the stove with a dry frying pan on medium, when the aroma hits you you're done. Careful not to burn the spices, so stir frequently.

Smoke signal... (from an old wok I use for smoking stuff). For smoking I used some aromatic wood chips, Sichuan peppercorns and Orange Pekoe tea. Rosemary between the breasts. First smoked then finished in the oven. Intensely smokey and still nicely pink in the middle. Kind of hard to test the doneness when both sides are fatty skin which plumps up during cooking. Because autumn...

Rustwood. Unequivocally I would still go with induction. The pan restrictions are really not a problem. I use a lot of le Creuset pots and pans and they are fine and, as I mentioned, as far as I can see gas doesn't really have any advantage over induction for woks. Electric ovens are actually preferred to gas by most cooks, although I would suggest getting a double oven, it makes life a lot easier. I also found that having a lot of lazy susan shelves is a great idea (my kitchen came with six large corner ones and they are great). Don't get any Whirlpool products, I replaced a Bosch double oven with a Whirlpool last year and I have had nothing but problems culminating with a refusal by Whirlpool to honor their warranty. Miele is the best from what I hear but expensive and they no longer make a 27 inch (I have cherry cabinetry that I love and don't want to replace) I had a Jennair electric cooktop that was not much good and the induction tops are much more responsive. I also haven't found any problem with controlling the level. The speed of response, which is a major problem with electric tops, is as fast as gas and cools off much much faster. Induction is also much safer, I had a colleague whose wife was killed when their gas cooker exploded It is also much easier to clean than gas or electric because spills and stains don't burn into the surface since only the area under the pan is hot. Oh and it heats up the kitchen much less. Lastly, I find it much easier to work around the cooktop when it is induction, you don't have to worry about burning yourself and you can use the rest of the cooktop to cut and serve. I would argue for a five burner top though. It isn't so much that you need all five burners but it allows you to spread three or four pans around more.

@IANSTUART, clearly you are happy with induction, but if you were redoing your kitchen and had the choice, would you do induction again or go with gas? We are going to be redoing our all-electric kitchen (came with the house) and have been planning on running gas to it (we have natural gas heat). I was surprised to find that electric seems to be the way to go for ovens these days and now there is a lot of induction buzz so I am reconsidering the gas line. Neither the pan restrictions nor the wok issue is a deal killer for us. We currently have a 220V Bosch electric/glass cooktop that was once a high-end model. It has one high-power/instant element, but we aren't thrilled with the level of control it offers on any of the elements. Even after many years of using it, finding the right medium or medium-low setting always seems involve more trial and error than it should, certainly more so than the gas elements in our previous home. I'd be interested to hear if anyone has that issue with their induction hobs.

Hi teapot, Thanks for starting this very interesting discussion. I'm no scientist, but the answer to your question I quoted is absolutely not. If a warped flat bottomed pan is a problem, don't you think the tiny contact area of a round wok would? I know your question was born of wishful/magical thinking, but it sure would be nice, wouldn't it? I love a round wok too, but I have learned to work around it with a conventional electric stove and a very heavy KitchenAid stainless tri-ply bottom skillet that is oversized with high rounded sides. I bought it when I was younger, and the weight is beginning to be a challenge, but I still pull it out for stir fries. I also love the ideas that have been brought up about the portable wok burners that are available in my Pan Asian market. There are so many good ideas here, including the super output outdoor propane wok burners. When there is a will to cook, one will find a way.

Love those Dehillerin copper pans and it's a pity you can't use them. I've seen induction pan converters advertised...would those work for you? Thanks for sharing your thoughts about induction -- it will help shape my questions when I go to test drive various options next week. A question regarding the wok. Do you think it would be possible to use a round bottom wok on the cooktop if it was surrounded by towel roll or something to hold it in place? And if so, could you use a power boost to create the kind of heat you'd want?