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Okay, now I want the Breville Wok. Dinner tonight. Thai Red Curry Chicken.

Back in my sailboat racing days I was rarely put in charge of the food, and it was interesting to see how the skipper dealt with the issue. Lake Superior is cold, year-round, and there's little as discouraging as spending 4 days choosing between cold sandwiches and instant ramen or soup in a styrofoam cup. (There may have been fruit also; I've put that particular Trans Superior Race more or less out of mind.) Other skippers I raced with were more interested in crew comfort, and over the years there have been frozen lasagna, heated in the (yes, gimbaled and yes, gimbals locked) oven as well as restaurant-quality boil-in-bag soups or dinners. Eggs and bacon for breakfast, in some cases, or hot or cold cereal. Sandwiches for lunch. On one much shorter race, when I was a novice cook but more interested in cooking than the other crew members, I cooked scrambled eggs with chunks of Jimmy Dean sausage mixed in. The skipper thought I was a gourmet cook! Times and my cookery have changed since then. Cruises are a different story than races, and probably more like the deliveries being discussed here. Last summer my husband, sister-in-law and I rented a 33' sloop for 4 days, and they let me take care of the food. We intended to spend every night docked somewhere on Lake Superior, but allowed for the possibility of its being too stormy or cold to want to use the barbeque grill latched to the stern rail. I purchased more food than we needed, due to that allowance, but we had plenty of choices and were never in danger of starving. As I recall the meals ran along these lines: Caprese salad with good fresh warm bread on the first night, with some of summer's finest tomatoes; pesto-stuffed boneless chicken thighs on the grill, with a fresh green salad and more bread on the second night; grilled kebabs that had by then thawed, over rice, for our final dinner. SIL and I preferred yogurt and fruit for breakfast; DH chose his usual cereal. I think we had scrambled eggs with cheese one day. Lunch tended to be sandwiches for DH and me and granola bars for SIL, which helps explain why she's much slimmer than I. We had fruit and pre-cut vegetables (broccoli, cauliflower, celery sticks, etc.) for snacks. Convenience foods that I brought along in case it was too miserable to cook were a selection of the aforementioned instant soups and ramens, and prepackaged ready-to-heat Indian foods: curries, saag paneer, precooked rice. That last was a surprise; Uncle Ben's actually offers some decent precooked, simply reheat, rice. Most of that stuff came home with us, and with the exception of the soups and ramens (which went to a food shelf) we've been enjoying them as quick dinners. I think stir fries make a lot of sense, but didn't plan for them on that trip and certainly didn't expect a wok. I packed my own knives but trusted the charter company otherwise, and if I'd brought a wok I don't know where we'd have put it in that particular boat. The storage was pretty limited. Here's a shot of the cooler, loaded for the trip: For the short time we were cruising the eggs couldn't have gone off anyway, but I'm glad to read @JohnT's and @Auspicious' advice to store them in cardboard rather than styrofoam, and to rotate them every day or so. That's good to know for the longer haul.

Only shallow fried in it. Worked well. It's the best electronic wok I've ever used. It gets the heat up the side of the walls nicely. I'm just discovering that my newest toy can replace a lot of my old appliances, so I'm making a mental list of things to sell in my head

rather than start a new thread , pls help ID a few items from The Chef's Line: this pot was steaming away . could it be a rice cooker ? this pan looks interesting : any ideas ? and a brass wok : this is said to not allow coconut milk and cream to curdle anyone have one > said to be useful for Thai cooking

Nice looking dish! Question on the Breville electric wok - did you ever use it to deep fry?

Ordered some Analon Nouvelle Copper nonstick pans to go with my new induction unit. Was a bit disappointed with the height of the sides of the pan at first, but discovered the that the heat spread pretty evenly up the sides. Thinking I will sell my Breville electric wok now. Made some one pad Thai to test it out. Includes dried shrimp for extra shrimpiness

Thanks for the tip. Maybe I should find some gloves to wear instead of just using a dish cloth then to protect hands from oil (even if I get a Pow Wok with a handle)? Edit: I think someone earlier mentioned Korin as a high quality wok maker and a reputable company which makes woks that would give me good wok hei, but I don't see the post anymore on here. Just wondering if you guys can confirm this wok would be a good choice for making restaurant-style Chinese food over a 65000 BTU burner (or something similar) to get good wok hei with the pow wok tossing cooking style for stir frying: http://www.korin.com/TK-301-07-36?sc=28&category=17780105 I was just concerned if it might be the wrong choice because it says it's "iron" instead of the usual silver colored carbon steel that these pow woks are usually made of. Not sure if that's a problem.

... and another, younger, kid mastering his wok skills. I reckon he has cracked it!

Western burners that are purpose-built for woks included? I notice outdoorstirfry.com seems to have several wok burners at decent looking prices. Does anyone on this website have experience buying from this company? Are they a reputable business with good products? Or do you have alternative wok burner suggestions? edit -- found another source for the 65000 btu Kahuna burner purchase so I don't need help with the burner question anymore.

I rather shot myself in the foot tonight. I had the brilliant idea of avoiding the heat in the kitchen (around 40ºC) and doing a 1-10-10 chicken breast. You only have to be in the kitchen to start the thing off, then you can leave after the first minute and let it get on with it. Pop back for a second between the two 10s and Robert is your father's brother. I planned to serve this with a simple salad - tomato and balcony basil. In a moment of total distraction, I felt the need of some carbs and insanely decided that the only possibility was what I call not-onion-bahjis. Due to India and China's long troubled relationship history, I cannot easily get many Indian essentials, including the requisite gram flour. So, must to the disgust of the entire population of the Indian sub-continent, I make do with regular all-purpose flour. I pimped my regular beer batter up with fried chilli flakes and black mustard seeds and mixed in the onions. Then had to stand over a very hot oil-filled wok while the damned things cooked. "The best laid schemes o' mice an' men / Gang aft agley" as Robert Burns said when he tried to cook bahjis. Still, mine tasted better than his!

Salt and (Sichuan) Pepper Prawns As ever, I choose my nomenclature carefully. They are prawns, not shrimp. There is a difference. Whatever, they were alive when they hit the wok. Cooked shell on and with the tastiest part - the heads. You know it makes sense.

I highly recommend the pow single handled woks from the Wok Shop. I have many woks, most of them schlepped back from China and much more expensive, but I return time and again to my Wok Shop wok as my favorite to use day to day. They are incredible bargains. Incidentally, the single handled wok is more of a northern style (and also frequently used in Taiwan), and the short dual handled woks more from the south and east and Sichuan. I have both, but the single handled wok is much easier to use, particularly on a western burner. Chinese professional burners do a much better job of aiming the heat at the bottom of the wok, but the western burners have much more distributed heat, and will heat your handles to the point at which they can't be handled with a dishtowel and require serious heat protection for your hands.

It is shamefully simple. I use Trader Joe's Thai Red Curry Sauce (which I see is now available on Amazon: Trader Joe's Thai Red Curry Sauce) and usually use leftover chicken. This time it was pieces I cut from the Korean BBQ chicken I did the other night. I start with a little peanut oil in a hot wok, to which I add any vegetables suitable for stir fry, this time it was onion, cubanelle peppers, zucchini coins, carrot slivers and some chopped garlic. When the vegetables are just about done, I add the curry sauce, chicken, and a wee bit of chili oil to bring up the heat a little bit and serve it with jasmine rice. HC

Just ran across this at Slickdeals... Seems of interest to people here: First and last are of particular interest, I think. The Sorcerer's Apprentices: A Season in the Kitchen at Ferran Adrià's elBulli $0.99 The Elements of Cooking: Translating the Chef's Craft for Every Kitchen $0.99 MEAT: Everything You Need to Know $0.99 Food Matters: A Guide to Conscious Eating w/ More Than 75 Recipes $0.99 The Pollan Family Table: The Very Best Recipes and KitchenWisdom for Delicious Family Meals $0.99 The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking $0.99 A Homemade Life: Stories and Recipes from My Kitchen Table $0.99 Bobby Flay's Grilling For Life: 75 Healthier Ideas for Big Flavor from the Fire $0.99 The UltraMetabolism Cookbook: 200 DeliciousRecipes that Will Turn on Your Fat-Burning DNA $0.99 My Year in Meals $0.99 The Tucci Table: Cooking With Family and Friends $0.99 Carla's Comfort Foods: Favorite Dishes from Around the World $0.99 Taste: Surprising Stories and Science About Why Food Tastes Good $0.99 Ratio: The Simple Codes Behind the Craft of Everyday Cooking $1.99 Mark Bittman's Kitchen Express $1.99 An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace$1.99 The Nerdy Nummies Cookbook: Sweet Treats for the Geek in All of Us $1.99 On Food and Cooking: The Science and Lore of the Kitchen $1.99 Thanks megakimcheelove and ProfessorChaos

Staggered home at around 5:30 pm in the 38ºC/100ºF evening and en route swung past the only one of two bakeries which do baguettes which was anywhere near me. I say they do baguettes, but with 50% French heritage and genes, I consider myself qualified to say they are a pale imitation, baked by someone who has never actually tasted one, but once saw a photograph. Anyway, I picked up a couple (beggars / choosers) and toddled home. I did drop one on the way and didn't notice until this woman came rattling up the sidewalk behind me on an electric scooter yelling "Foreigner! Foreigner! You dropped your... something!" in Chinese. She had no idea what it was. I thanked her profusely, crossed the road, bought a six-pack of beers and within minutes was home-sweet-homed again. I had earlier procured some pork tenderloin and diced it. Retrieved said pig meat from fridge and slathered it with sriracha sauce and garlic. (There was a moment of hesitation while I decided between red and yellow sriracha, but I went for the red. Hey, it's communist round here!) Left it for a bit while I checked out that the six pack beer was of a suitable quality and temperature for my fine-tuned requirements. The first can passed muster, but I thought that might be a fluke so tested another as a control sample, just in case. By this time, I was getting peckish, so I fried the marinated pork along with its marinade until it seemed cooked through. Didn't take long in a hot wok. Sliced a tomato. Dropped cooked pork onto halved baguette (un-buttered) and topped with tomato slices. Placed in mouth. Chewed and swallowed. Repeated twice. Then drank the remainder of the beer just in case it became too cold in the fridge or went off. Routine disaster prevention procedure. My dietary advisor would probably be having seizures, if I had ever employed such a thing, but it filled me up, made my mouth happy, and didn't involve the kitchen being a furnace for more than a minute. And I still have half a baguette for breakfast tomorrow. Genius!

Yes. But that is a commercial kitchen and those guys hands are scarred and burnt. I have been in hundreds of commercial kitchens across China and seen them - the hands and the woks. I've even cooked in them. I've even been in the kitchen in the video! The OP is looking for high heat in a domestic setting (something I've already pointed out Chinese people almost never aim for). You will note those guys in the video do toss by yanking the wok backwards. And splashing oil over their calloused incinerated hands. A long handle wok makes a lot of sense in a domestic set up and are also used in many industrial kitchens, too. The handle-less wok may be the "original", but the Model T Ford was the original mass produced car. I don't see many people queuing up for those today.

Personally, I don't toss the food by yanking the wok backwards - instead I use the spatula and ladle. But what do I know - I'm just an amateur.

Quite simply. How are you going to be able to toss food with that wok over a very high flame without wearing an asbestos suit? How are you going to hold it? What the OP is/was looking for is a professional type set up. That is an amateur, domestic wok of average quality. Nothing special.

So, they illustrate their round bottom woks with an image and a description of a flat-bottomed wok. Seems like they've really got themselves sorted out. Whatever, I still say the wok isn't suitable for a high-BTU burner. You really need a long-handled Beijing-style wok for that.

And here is the page for the flat bottom version, with the same description and picture as the round bottom wok. Note that when you select a wok size it will tell you how much it weighs.

Wokshop's website uses the same description for both the round and flat bottom versions - there is a separate page to order the flat bottom version. The link I gave goes to the page that clearly says "round bottom". There is also a separate "commercial" page for 18" and larger size versions of the same wok.

That wok, as the description indicates, is a flat bottomed wok designed for use on electric stove tops and therefore is not what the OP was looking for. It wouldn't be suitable for a high heat wok burner.

@jemartin - You might want to consider a 16" - 18" carbon steel wok such as this one. I have an Eastman Big Kahuna burner and a 16" spun steel wok (I think made by Atlas Metal Spinning) that has two welded-on steel handles, and pairs well w/ the Big Kahuna. [Trivia: PF Chang was started by Philip Chang, son of Cecilia Chang (of The Mandarin fame).]

You read correctly, I think. a) I don't always cook Chinese, as I'm sure you have noticed. b) Contrary to popular opinion, not all food in China is is cooked in seconds over blistering hot woks. My small slow cooker, which I use most, was a gift from a Chinese friend. Later I bought the second to deal with occasional larger requirements . Many Chinese dishes are slow cooked or can be adapted for slow cooking. Hong shao (red-cooked) dishes are often slow braised for extended periods, for example. Every store selling domestic cooking appliances has slow cookers. Soups, stocks, braised anything*, tomato and other sauces, can all be prepared without turning the kitchen into a furnace by using the slow cooker. Tonight I am slow cooking a couple of chicken legs and will use the meat with a ... well, I'm not sure yet. See the dinner thread tomorrow! All that said, yes I do cook most things in one of my woks. *Slow cookers are ideal for pig ears, oxtails and other tougher cuts which are then finished in the wok.

A new show on YouTube is just coming out now, from our own @Fengyi. I had the pleasure of hanging out with her for a day on our trip to Beijing, and her great personality definitely comes out in her show. This show is all about the local foods of various areas in China and the wines that pair best with them. Fongyee travels around to all different areas, talks with chefs and shows some awesome food porn, all with tons of knowledge to boot. Here's a link to the first episode: