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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

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

This year I received measuring cups/spoons, several silicone spatulas of various sizes. A hot pad with school art work from my niece, a 7 piece set of silicone spurtles, silicone whisk, chocolates, Walkers shortbread cookies , and a Magic Bullet . (3 years ago I received a 14" T-fal nonstick wok. thus the reason behind all the silicone utensils.) And I forgot to add, a 2# wheel of Brie!

After many iterations, I sear straight from the sous vide cook with the following parameters: I use an iron, fully-seasoned wok heated over a wok burner to the hottest it will go. The outside of the steak has to be dried (I use paper towels). No oil in the pan, I oil the outside of the steak. A light sprinkle of salt is added to the oiled steak prior to searing. The sear on each side is very brief. I've also done a deep fry sear and that is also excellent.

I have a couple of glass things which I do use for oven stuff like cottage pie or fruit crumbles. Pretty much everything else is stainless steel, except for my woks which are cast iron, but what I really like to use is wood. Obviously in limited applications, but for serving or mixing bowls, there is just something that comforts my inner primeval. Ditto bamboo, cos that is what I can find most easily here beyond the bamboo curtain.

This is my first time ever making bread with yeast. I also had the issue of scale accuracy <1g so I went with volume using the scale as a sanity check for those ingredients. Proofed at ~75-80degrees for an hour and 10 minutes. I accidentally did the 30 minutes covered at 450f and finished uncovered at 470f but the bottom seems slightly burnt. Second loaf came out questionable as I only have one dutch oven and did it in my cast iron pan with a wok cover for a lid. I think it will taste fine it just didn't end up with as nice as an oven spring as this one in addition to botching the shape a bit. I like the taste, but I can't lie it feels like something is missing without natural yeast. The whole grains give it a nice flavour but I like a nice super sour bread. Dead nuts simple recipe though and I can't wait to get my hands on the full book. Fingers crossed! My bread journey is just starting.

Ooh, that looks good. I knew of the dextrose/soda thing from wok preps like Mongolian Beef, but I didn't think of it for steaks. Homebrew here I come.

My dinner posts are going to be limited to the weekends since I tend to wok work long hours during the week. This was last Sunday's dinner. Definitely more mundane than the above. Yogurt chicken curry served with mango pickle Roasted cauliflower Pearl couscous cooked in vegetable broth with preserved lemon, onion and cilantro Fresh pineapple for dessert

1) What is your favourite restaurant (apart from your own) I've been lucky enough to eat in starred restaurants, but if I'm being honest, my favourite, the place I was happiest in my mind and mouth, is a tiny hole-in-the-wall Sichuan place operated by lovely couple near my home in the Chinese countryside. He cooks; she does front-of-hole. When they get busy, which happens more than you might expect for a place in the middle of nowhere, they employ students from the local colleges to help out, and they are lovely too. 2) What is your most important ingredient in the kitchen, and why? My mood. Because you can't cook well, even for yourself, without love. 3) What tool is most important in your kitchen, and why? My wok(s). Because there is almost nothing you can't cook in a wok and lots you can only cook in a wok. 4) Which restaurant, anywhere, is your dream destination to dine? A tiny father and son restaurant on a lonely Thai island where I spent a honeymoon. The island was empty apart from me and the Mrs and the restaurant staff of two. We ordered crab and the son disappeared and came back dripping wet with a beautiful specimen he had just dived for. Father cooked it to perfection. Sadly, wife is no longer with us, but I dream to go back. 5) What trend do you see becoming popular in restaurants in the next year? Where? In the west, more regional Asian food. There is a plethora of unknown dishes, still. Here in China, unfortunately, more ersatz western dishes cooked by people who have only ever seen pictures of the real thing and then imagined the recipe. 6) What trend would you most like to see go away? The increasing misuse of words and phrase on menus which only demonstrate the writer's ignorance of their native tongue. "Iteration" does not mean "variation" or even "version". 'Flavor profile' nearly almost just means 'flavor'. Grrrrr! Just tell me what I'm going to eat. I'm not a moron.

Sichuan Boneless Chicken (from Martin Yan’s ‘A Wok For All Seasons’), Baby Bok Choy in Oyster Flavored Sauce and Ginger Citrus Rice

I, too was thinking a turkey fryer burner or wok burner would be much less expensive. I also found one for home-brewing designed to boil lots of liquid quickly that looked more stable than some of the others. You could probably use it indoors under an adequate hood. But for now, I'd just get a bigger pot. Something like this - Is a triple batch enough for now? http://a.co/03NmrKd

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: