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I can't put my finger on it, but there is something about using a wok vs a pan that you just can't get the same results, and it has nothing to do with the heat level. I believe its the way the wok flips the vegetables/meat when you stir them due to the woks shape. Then when you move the vegetables/meat up the sides not only does it prevent burning, it also alows the liquids to drain down to the bottom where it evaporates faster preventing your vegetables/meat from boiling in its own liquids.

It's very possible I misunderstood you, then. I did envision a wok and finely cut vegetables as additions, but I suppose the same could be accomplished with any skillet light enough for her to toss materials in. Thanks for the clarification.

As mentioned, seems to be a lot of cross over between flavours and food - I will attempt a list of flavours: - Truffles (white or black, I am not picky!) - Mangoes - Raspberry - Caramelized Onion - Roasted Garlic - Lobster - Crab - Roasted Almond - Figs - Wok-hay-Veggies

In the past few months I've allowed myself more eggs. I like a small omelet with a little Oaxaca melting cheese and it gives me the chance to use an old well seasoned carbon steel omelet pan. Another new dish (to me) is the simple Chinese staple of wok fried egg and tomato that @heidih mentions above. In a pinch it even satisfies when the tomatoes are less than perfect, like now, during the winter. Over rice it proves just about the easiest two-ingredient meal, not including condiments. And since the revelation of the Kenji hard boiled egg steaming routine we eat more whole peeled eggs. The steaming method not only allows the eggs to be smoothly peeled, but I also find it easier to control how the yolk is cooked. Finally, if you have a few left over shreds of lox (happens rarely), there's always a lox omelet to look forward to. I too love a little egg drop soup, especially if I am sick. Good chicken stock and rice or noodles and a drizzle of egg is makes me feel a little less sorry for myself. I feel a lot less sorry for myself if I can get my husband to make it under those circumstances. I am not one of those people who swoon over runny yolk egg porn. Forget fried, poached or anything with a giant wobbly yellow globe. I don't even look at the breakfast thread here until later in the day. Oozing on my plate makes we woozy.

Eggs - a miracle that we take for granted, sometimes drool over as egg porn. feared nutritionally for a while; the list goes on. I needed a hit of protein in a soup today and meant to do egg drop style but the phone rang, I turned the burner off, and returned to a lightly creamy and simple enriched broth. When I started cooking from Julia Child long ago eggs took am important role. One's first quiche, eggs as enrichment, souffle - long long list. And then forays into other countries - tea eggs, baked whole in shell, in flavorful saucy bakes, eggs and tomatoes in a quicky wok pass. So...I ask - your most stellar egg forays recently or as standards.? I live in the land of Eggslut = Alvin Cailan) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eggs An older topic as inspiration https://forums.egullet.org/topic/147288-the-egg-thread/

My dream catch needs to eat the florets too, since I hate broccoli. Oh wait, he already does, but he never gets to eat it because I can't even tolerate the smell. I didn't used to be like this and I don't know how this happened. On the other hand I really like Chinese broccoli (gai lan), stems, leaves the whole package. With lots of garlic, wok-fried. I remember those years when my daughter only ate white food. What a weird phase. But some kids just need to take a stand about food. Until the don't.

Tonight I put my carbon steel wok on with the mat and set to precise fast (or whatever it’s really called) at 320f and the temperature first overshot to 393 then down to 289 then slowly crept back up until it settled in. I added some peanut oil as it was coming back up, then when it announced it was ready I threw in some green beans (a large handful of the thin ones). I was amazed that it dropped the temperature down by 30 degrees but quickly recovered. Stir frying the beans went well at 320 which was a guess on my part. Overall pretty successful.

One of my weaknesses as a shopper is overenthusiasm. I buy a lot of whatever looks good -- especially seasonal produce -- and then scramble (or fail) to use it before it goes off. So it was that yesterday I had an overabundance of corn to use up, as well as tomatoes, Japanese eggplant, and lettuce. Here's what I used, and how it turned out: 4 ears of corn: kernels cut off, and "milk" scraped into a bowl with the kernels 5 small Japanese eggplants, sliced into 1/2" coins and steamed 4 sausages (2 Polish, 2 jalapeno jack cheese bratwursts) sliced into 1/2" coins 1 jalapeno pepper, seeded, deveined and chopped 1/2 poblano pepper, seeded, deveined and chopped ~1/4c chicken jello 1 c cherry tomatoes on the way out, and the surviving 3/4 of a beefsteak tomato, chopped a bit of water as a sauce booster Steamed the eggplant coins as noted above, to soften them and prevent them from requiring too much oil. Filmed a wok with oil (I used pecan, because I happen to have it, but any cooking oil would have done) and heated it, then sauteed the sausage coins until they were partially cooked. Added the eggplant, and stirred all until browning began. Added the peppers until soft. Added the tomatoes, cooked until the cherry tomatoes began to pop. Added the corn. Added the chicken jello, and stirred until it melted. By that time it appeared that the beefsteak tomato juice and corn milk needed more assistance, so added a touch of water to develop more sauce. Here is the finished melange: About half went into a bowl with about half the lettuce, with the idea of making a wilted-lettuce salad. It looks a bit like a dog's dinner, but we both liked it. As usual, he wanted it slightly sweetened and added white wine worcestershire sauce; I wanted it slightly tarter and added a touch of red wine vinegar to brighten it. It was a good way to use those ingredients, including the corn. I think sweet corn is a wonderfully versatile filler for other dishes. Today we finished the leftovers. It looks better before stirring! Now I have to go buy more corn.

I have couple. The cheap high powered ones are great for boiling and high simmers (not great at low stuff) and doing things like sauté. I couldn’t go back to even a good gas cooker if I have an induction cooker for bringing things to a boil it just is better. But you’ll need a good one to really show you how good induction can be and how it can be better then gas by miles! I have a. Second hand made by cooktek that’s designed for be variable powered with hundreds of steps and is super stable in power output and cost a couple hundred dollars (AUD) and I would and will pay twice that because I want a breville control freak. You can also get ones that work with woks and I’ve heard pretty cool things about them as well. I really wish we had more options of good hardware at more consumer friendly prices but you pay through the nose for high control induction units but its worth it.

Another vote for the Woks of Life chili oil. We made a jar to use in their recipe for spicy lamb noodles like the ones from Xian Famous Foods, but find ourselves using it in so many other things now that we have it on hand. That was going to be my suggestion. Don't hesitate to let them know that you're writing from far away!

I used the one in the JB Award wining Phoenix Claw and Jade Trees. It's similar to woks of life recipe only they use black cardamom, ginger, scallion, no garlic the Sichuan peppercorns give it a floral, fragrant flavor in addition to the numbing you can find both Sichuan peppercorns and black cardamom in the Chinatown in NYC (not sure about your location)

Probably not much help but I have a low-end 240 V burner since I live in Australia. It works but I think they just dropped the power level to match your cheap 110v ones. I agree with you that there are two goals, absolute power and finesse of control. I use mine mainly for boiling pasta water so I would tend towards power. If it had a lot, maybe I'd use if for searing but I use the gas wok burner for that. Pro-Tip: Don't put the induction burner too close to the gas stove when using both. But the melted side doesn't seem to hurt anything 😀

@Kerry Beal That wok looks great - have you used it for anything other than deep frying? I'd love to know how it works for a stir fry with the control freak...

The onion, soy & other ingredients probably wont combine the same as they do in a Wok or high heat. The sugars will probably not change to the caramels that happen at high heat. You could partially cook the potato, onions & flavors on the stove top, cool them and then add the result to chicken thighs in the ziplock. bags and SV as normal. Its probably not going to taste the same as you remember though. Its likely to be a trial and error thing

The next day, we woke up early to make our flight back to Singapore - our flight landed around 1:30PM, and we didn't have to be back in the airport for our flight home until about 8, so we checked our bags in the airport and took a taxi into the city. After landing, we went straight for a light lunch (they had already fed us on the plane - check out the Airline food thread)... I had been jonesing for this place ever since our trip here a few years ago... Since we were here last, they have significantly upgraded their restaurant space and ordering system, as well as opened some satellite locations... good to know the food is just as good though! Kid goat biryani Chicken biryani Their biryani is done the traditional way, now called Dum Biryani. The aromatics are incredible... I wish I could find something even remotely as good in NYC... for more info, see my Week in Singapore thread in the SE Asia dining section from a few years ago... After lunch, we headed off to the Gardens by the Bay. With so many choices of what to do, and such little time to do it, it was a tough decision, but I had read earlier that they had a new exhibit of scented orchids in the Cloud Forest... Enroute to the gardens... Then we went on to the Flower Dome where they were having a rose exhibit... Bottle trees Baobob - makes me thing of Le Petit Prince... The super trees... functional they they not only make electricity for the gardens (there are solar cells on top), they are very useful in the dehumidification of the domes - the system uses a liquid desiccant which removes a lot of humidity which takes a huge load off of their A/C system... the liquid desiccant is then boiled to release the water which is vented out through the top of the trees. Time for an early dinner before we go back to the airport... I couldn't wait to get back to an old favorite... Sambal Pomfret - I love their sambal - it's a wonderful mixture of chili, garlic, shallots, dried shrimp and shrimp paste, and who knows what else... This is fried until it's almost dry... the fish is coated in rice flour and wok fried, then coated with the sambal... if there is a heaven, it smells like shrimp paste... Crab bee hoon - this is one of the huge mud crabs - the claw meat is the size of a small fist! Tons of sweet crabmeat and very little effort needed to extract it. It seems like there's a lot of sauce, but it was sucked up by the bee hoon (rice noodles) pretty quickly. This was a really tasty dish, but I think the crab bee hoon at Sing Huat Eating House had a bit better flavor to the bee hoon... but this crab was cooked absolutely perfectly, while Sin Huat's was slightly overcooked the last time we were there.... Kangkong, aka morning glory, aka pak boong, aka rau muong, aka ong choy Baby gailan Now that we are completely stuffed, it's time to head back to the airport to get our bags out of storage. There is a spa/lounge pre-security in Terminal 2 that has shower rooms for rent... for about US$13, we were able to spend 45 minutes taking a shower and getting changed into fresh clothes for our 18 hour plane flight home... So that's it!!! I hope you enjoyed coming along our trip and that the rambling that my half-jetlag induced head came up with made some sort of sense!

this is really about the LunchLadies having a bit of Vacation but PBS, USA used to be a Public funded affair it might still be of sortsw but after Julia Child stopped filming in balk and White the cooking shows became ' sponsored ' a very long time ago when I have cable briefly Molto Mario , etc I was able to cap them and then archive the, FoodnetWork for MortoMario has more minutes / 30 than PBS back them lets say 2003 now the PBS cooking shows I cap have more sponsors and less time Dans Le Wok show feed the books and sometimes not such a new book either and then they travel to Events I dont mind my library system as all the bookd and buys all the DVD's

Tonight's dinner: Wings! (slow cooked in broth, onion/bacon jam, leftover burger sauce, miso, strawberry/cayenne jam, and char siu sauce, then crisped up on the wok) with rapini on the side.

Thank you! I am very happy with it. Ton answer your questions: yes, we replaced the original window which had two smaller windows with a divider with one large window. The view is out to woods so it's a pretty view, at least when there are leaves on the trees. The other side of the island has two regular sized drawers (I use one for silverware and the other for side towels), a microwave drawer (truthfully I did not even know these existed until we redid the kitchen but our designer insisted on it and I am happy because it frees up a lot of counter space). There is also a very deep drawer under the microwave, which I use to store my Breville hot wok, a tall cabinet with dividers where I store sheet pans, racks and silpats, and finally a pull out cabinet where I store clean recycling and non-smelly trash until it goes to the larger bins in the garage. The countertops are quartzite.

I joined the Yan Fan Train during the Wok with Yan days....loved that guy. I will look further at another local Chinese supermarket next I go for rice noodles. I have a load of Ramps which I think would go really well in a Ramp Ho Fun.

I like salmon and eat it every week. Often cure a piece for weekend lunches. Have made salmon almost every which way, too. But not this... Ate it on train journeys in Japan. Couldn't stop after just 1. Saved 1 last bundle to take home and made it last and last. Hope to visit Hakodate again so I can get more, and ship it home. I also bought many bags of dried squid. It tasted better than Chinese or Taiwanese versions. My jaws hurt so nice for days. I bought the entire display! (Many stalls have free samples, you can always try a small piece before deciding to buy) Besides home-cured salmon I also like it hot smoked (I use an old wok). I cry again I swear again I drink again I smoke again

Good YouTube channel that I found to see a pro in action (I'm a visual learner). Notice that they throttle the gas with their knees or pull the wok on and off to regulate the temp. https://youtu.be/R9uk4B8BGrM

Her woks are actually cast iron, which is even heavier. I had the privilege of eating her food about 20 years ago. It was amazing! Thanks for pointing me to this documentary.

There is a new series on Netflix all about street food and the vendors who bring it to the masses. I saw one episode so far on a Thai woman who earned a Michelin star for her food, it is humble beginnings and pure necessity that drive a lot of these people to this vocation. What was striking when you look at this woman of advanced age (I don't recall if they said her age or I just missed it) you can see the strength in her arms from tossing a steel wok all day, every day, and the burn marks that are no doubt the occupational hazard. She wore some crazy goggles while she cooked (looked like motorcycle goggles) to protect her eyes. A real badass, she cooked what she wanted to eat and knew people would want to buy it.

I recently bought one of these rocket stoves for bikepacking. I'm anxious to see how it works as a wok burner.

I notice some chefs seem to like adding water to the hot pan, and the pan flames up. Does this improve wok hei or is it just for show?