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Woks - Buying, Care, and Use


eatingwitheddie

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I've actually bought a pretty cheapo wok burner that burns at about 30-50K BTU I think. Hong Kong chefs crank up the heat up to at least 120k BTU, enough to make the metal glow red hot. But even with my wok burner, I still have a very difficult time with the heat control. I think Hong Kong chefs have a pedal or a switch they can hit with their feet to adjust the flame, but I have to reach over for the propane valve, which can be dangerous with a searingly hot wok (including a hot handle) heavy with food. Plus it's really difficult to handle the wok over such a cheap burner, it's hard to keep the wok still and balanced. I wish I had some sort of specialized stable working area.

Btw, this site is where I got the wok burner from

http://www.outdoorstirfry.com/

Edited by takadi (log)
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You want the 'heat' --- that is a given.

But if you are working with a regular kitchen stove, the thing to keep in mind is not to overload your wok (or pan).

Whatever heat you have under that wok -- and even if it is at the smoking stage, all is for naught if you dump in a pound of meat at one time. All that heat is dissapated in seconds. The pieces of meat will not sear, and their juices will run out ----- leaving you with a watery stew.

Rather -- work with just 1/2 or 1/3 of a pound at a time. In other words, do what is called for with just a portion of the meat. Remove it and do the next portion and so on. At the end of the recipe all the meat is added to the vegetables, seasonings and sauces, or whatever the recipe calls for.

I timed myself doing it this way, and it does not take any longer to do it in portions than to do the whole pound at once ----- and the texture of the meat is better.

One other thing, stir-frying doesn't mean that food is tossed all over the place---- especially in the air where it cools. When doing the meat, press the pieces into the hot oil, and then turn them over when they have seared.

Have you ever tried the 'velveting' method of cooking meat? It is sort of an oil poaching, and the high heat of a wok is not an issue.

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jo mel

For a regular kitchen stove, I find it easier to just use a regular frying pan. It seems that flat bottomed woks are just overkill and a flat bottomed pan works so much better since my stove is pretty weak.

I'm not sure if all the flipping is for show, but from what I got, "true" stir fry, as a opposed to just sauteeing, involves intense heat which requires the food to be tossed rapidly. I think the tossing is also done so the oil and food is mixed with the air, allowing it to ignite into flame and basically char-broiled the entire dish within seconds. Talk of stir-frying tends to make a big deal about "wok hei", which can only be achieved apparently from monstrous heat. Of course if used correctly, practically anything can be cooked in a wok with any method.

I just recently learned about velveting, and man I wish I knew about this technique sooner. I was always wondering how Chinese restaurants got their meat a certain texture.

I found this article on wok cooking pretty great

http://www.peiwei.com/realestate/online/articles/03-01.php

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I occasionally "stir-fry" in cast iron. Sometimes it is good to let food sit and get charred a bit on one side before continuing.

The problem with a flat pan, though, is that the food tends to just scoot around when you want to flip it. The deep bowl of a wok is much better for this.

Jo-mel is right about doing stir fries in batches. It really doesn't take longer. I keep a big stainless bowl on the stove to facilitate flipping the food back-and-forth.

I don't know the actual strength of my burner, but I have a fairly "normal" old gas range. I use a 14-inch wok with a long handle and a "helper handle." It has a flat bottom, but tends to lean towards the handle side, so I really don't know how much that helps.

You may have heard - "Hot wok, cold oil. Hot oil, cold food." I.e., let the wok get good and hot before adding the oil, then do the same with the oil. You will develop an instinct about when the oil is ready to start smoking.

By the way, "cold food" is a bit of a misnomer. Within reasonable health concerns, bring the food to room temperature before cooking.

Once you have developed a sense of how pleasant it is to see/hear/smell food cook properly over high heat, you will really want to avoid the heartbreaking thud of too much food hitting a wok.

BB

Food is all about history and geography.

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When you look at Hzrt's fantastic pictorials, you then see that you really DON'T need a wok! When I started on my Chinese cooking venture when I first married (50 years ago) we couldn't afford a wok. I used a flat iron pan and it was just fine.

I use my different sized woks now, BUT I don't use one of those round 'nests' for holding the wok. I prefer to have the wok right on the burner. This makes for tipping, but since I usually have my hand on the handle, this is not a problem. Also, I invert the stove grid that is over the gas burner. That side is a bit concave and it helps with the balance of the wok.

Big Bunny -- that "heartbreaking thud" is so descriptive!! In my cooking classes, I tell people to cook with their ears as well as eyes and nose. You want to hear that sizzle!!

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For a regular kitchen stove, I find it easier to just use a regular frying pan. It seems that flat bottomed woks are just overkill and a flat bottomed pan works so much better since my stove is pretty weak.

I'm not sure if all the flipping is for show, but from what I got, "true" stir fry, as a opposed to just sauteeing, involves intense heat which requires the food to be tossed rapidly. I think the tossing is also done so the oil and food is mixed with the air, allowing it to ignite into flame and basically char-broiled the entire dish within seconds.  Talk of stir-frying tends to make a big deal about "wok hei", which can only be achieved apparently from monstrous heat. Of course if used correctly, practically anything can be cooked in a wok with any method.

I just recently learned about velveting, and man I wish I knew about this technique sooner. I was always wondering how Chinese restaurants got their meat a certain texture.

I found this article on wok cooking pretty great

http://www.peiwei.com/realestate/online/articles/03-01.php

Interesting piece. They're working with much higher heats than I ever did.

I did a lot of wok cooking at home for 20 years. (I've gotten lazy since we moved to suburbia & don't do much of it any more.) One big advantage of a real wok is that it contains the oil spatter; stir frying in a frying pan always seemed to mess up the stovetop & countertop much worse. I have one of those woks with a ring that sits around the burner - gas stove - so that the wok sits a couple of inches off the burner element & the heat is spread around a wider area of the wok bottom than it would be without that added height. Always got good results, considering that I wasn't working with a true wok stove.

"Velveting" seems to have a couple of different meanings. Coincidentally, I was watching America's Test Kitchen doing a frying pan stir-fry the other night, & to them velveting meant tossing your sliced chicken in a cornstarch/soy/sherry mixture before frying, so that the meat was coated with the mixture.

The cookbook from which I learned used a similar mixture & method but insisted on the necessity of rice wine, of course. It also called for a period of marination - 10 minutes or so - so that the mixture got absorbed into the meat / poultry / seafood to some degree. (The precise mixture would vary depending on the recipe.) The term "velveting" wasn't in vogue at that point, this was just a standard part of the technique that I picked up.

Thank God for tea! What would the world do without tea? How did it exist? I am glad I was not born before tea!

- Sydney Smith, English clergyman & essayist, 1771-1845

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When you look at Hzrt's fantastic pictorials, you then see that you really DON'T need a wok! 

I've always wondered that myself. Is there really any difference or advantage of a wok to a skillet? Some say that woks get hotter due to its shape, but it seems like it's a niche design only for pit flames, not flat stove tops. Not to mention the whole flat bottom vs round bottom wok debate

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I've tried stir-frying (I guess properly called 'sauteeing') with frying pans, but I find it really difficult. For one, as a first class klutz, I invariably flip food out of the pan onto the stove. To prevent that, I have to saute the food so gingerly that the very slowness of it ends up being inefficient. The height of the wok also makes it easier to cover cooking food (say, when I'm doing veggies). Plus, the hot/cold areas of the wok are exactly what I need sometimes. When food is cooking too fast or I have a bit too much liquid in the bottom. I can push food up to the sides of the wok to slow down the cooking or let the liquid evaporate.

Also, I really don't use my wok as a specialty item; it's my go-to cookware for just about everything. I use it to make soup sometimes, of course I stir-fry, I deep fry, I steam with it, etc. So, if the question is, "do I need to add a wok to my small kitchen when I already have 50 other pots and pans?" I guess the answer is no. You can certainly use a skillet to stir-fry. However, if you think in broader terms than just "As an eGulleter I want to make Chinese food stir-fry as authentically as possible" you'll find that a wok is one of the most versatile pieces of cookware you can own.

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Also, I really don't use my wok as a specialty item; it's my go-to cookware for just about everything.

Besides the 14-inch wok, I have an 18-inch, mostly to deep-fry fish.

I also have two 12-inch woks. Although they are a bit small for most stir-frying, they are light and easy to handle. I find them useful for all sorts of everyday tasks. For $8.95 each they have been amazingly useful.

BB

Food is all about history and geography.

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A lot can be done with just a frying pan.

Most of the recipes in Ah Leung's "Chinese Food Pictorials, by hzrt8w" were done in a frying pan. Peggy (Hest88) brings up a good point though that due to its depth cooking in a wok is certainly easier when it comes to flipping/stir frying ingredients.

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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I'm not going to tell you how many woks I have in my kitchen! But the reason for so many is because they are used in my cooking classes and I need to show size, material and round/flat bottom differences and usefulness, and so on.

But-- for my own use, I often go for a non-stick, or a cast iron one, or a 12 inch carbon. I have a stainless steel one, with two handles that I use for steaming. I never use my regular seasoned woks for that. But this stainless one is probably used more than any other pot/pan in the kitchen as I use it for mixing (stuffings /meatloaf/ for instance) and it is the best for boiling pasta! Its use is endless. I have several sizes of the stainless and they are treasures!

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However, if you think in broader terms than just "As an eGulleter I want to make Chinese food stir-fry as authentically as possible" you'll find that a wok is one of the most versatile pieces of cookware you can own.

That's exactly why I love the wok in the first place and why I bought one, but I guess I kind of forgot about that in the premise of my question when I got caught up in all the "flame" and glory of Hong Kong style stir-fry. After all, a wok is just a giant metal bowl, which allows it to adapt to almost all cooking styles and methods

I feel like I've rediscovered myself through some Zen like enlightenment :biggrin:

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That's exactly why I love the wok in the first place and why I bought one, but I guess I kind of forgot about that in the premise of my question when I got caught up in all the "flame" and glory of Hong Kong style stir-fry. After all, a wok is just a giant metal bowl, which allows it to adapt to almost all cooking styles and methods.

If it's what you want, unless your stove is _really_ bad, you can probably manage to get the oil to ignite. You need to heat the wok, a couple of minutes if the flame is weak, put in the oil, get that as hot as possible, add the food, and give everything a good shake or two. As you say, the aeration helps, and if you can get the oil to aerosolize above the pan, it doesn't take a lot to ignite it. Tilting the wok also helps, moving it off the centre of the flame. Obviously, you need to be a bit careful, especially first time around. I nearly had a heart attack the first time I did it, because it was unintentional.

As you might expect, this is not a very clean way to cook, it will distribute oil around the kitchen and over you as well. To some extent, you are conflating what restaurant cooks are doing with what ordinary people do. As some of the comments in this thread indicate, and my slightly limited observation of Chinese cooking at home bears this out, many people don't cook exactly this way at home (Bourdain rule: "My kitchen is not a restaurant"). Another thing is that by no means not all Chinese recipes call for cooking at fierce temperatures.

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I don't do these kind of stir fry indoors anymore, there's just way too much smoke. I bought a wok burner that packs quite alot of BTU's. I just put the contraption inside a grill stand and attached it to a propane tank.

Some people sear their steaks on a regular pan and get good results, some prefer grilling on charcoal or broiling under gas. I think high heat cooking is just one facet of chinese cooking that is interesting and could yield good results if I explored it more. It just makes the dish a little more special I think.

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Does anyone remember the kitchen show on the early days of the Food Network? They'd show uber designed kitchens. One kitchen had a wok station. The burner was surrounded by a running water bath so it anything fell out of the wok or splattered out of the wok it just got washed away. It's not a very eco-friendly idea but was intriguing nonetheless.

 

“Peter: Oh my god, Brian, there's a message in my Alphabits. It says, 'Oooooo.'

Brian: Peter, those are Cheerios.”

– From Fox TV’s “Family Guy”

 

Tim Oliver

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Some people sear their steaks on a regular pan and get good results, some prefer grilling on charcoal or broiling under gas. I think high heat cooking is just one facet of chinese cooking that is interesting and could yield good results if I explored it more. It just makes the dish a little more special I think.

I agree. I'm not too keen on the mess, but I think it does improve flavour.

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Is there really any difference or advantage of a wok to a skillet? Some say that woks get hotter due to its shape, but it seems like it's a niche design only for pit flames, not flat stove tops. Not to mention the whole flat bottom vs round bottom wok debate

Cook's Illustrated has done a bunch of testing, and they side with a skillet, rather than a wok, because of the greater surface area of the skillet on home stove burners.

The most recent article on this question:

http://www.cooksillustrated.com/testing.asp?testingid=651

But there was another older CI article I remember reading, wok versus skillet, but I couldn't find it on the web. This blog may refer to that article: (See post for 2/12/08.) http://buggydoo.blogspot.com/2008_02_01_archive.html It seems CI recommended a cast iron skillet.

I myself use a 14" nonstick wok with a handle. I'm used to it. But the best wok I ever cooked on (& it didn't belong to me) was a traditional seasoned 16" carbon steel wok mounted very securely on a gas burner. That 16" size was perfect for scooping and tossing the ingredients with room to spare.

I've tried stirfrying in a large skillet, and the skillet cooks very well, but it didn't feel like Chinese cooking. So I stick to the wok and sear in small batches for best results.

BTW, I've been told that a wok should be less than half full of ingredients for optimal cooking results.

Edited by djyee100 (log)
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Some might like to consider the Cooktek professional induction single wok stoves in the 3.5 and 5 kW models. They cost around $1500 BUT numerous advantages attend their use. No flames, instant heating, a certain degree of portability, rugged construction. The fire safety aspects make them worth serious consideration. Indoor cooking year round.

In gas appliances only about a third of the heat is reaching the wok, even less the food to be cooked. In the induction stove, a minimum of 80% of the electrical energy, perhaps more is directed to the steel wok, making the apparently lower "power' equivalent to a much higher (BTU) rated gas burner.

Edited by v. gautam (log)
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The large burner on an electric range used in conjunction with a plain thin steel 10-12" fry pan will always do a better job in stir frying than a wok on a weak flame/heat.

If you are cooking any more than a plateful (one serving) of food in a wok in a typical domestic setting you will NOT be able to maintain the high temps required for chowing (stirfrying). What you are doing would be ji, jing, or mun, moist cooking.

Many domestic gas ranges now come with a 15,000 btu rated burner which is what I would consider the absolute minimum required to achieve wok hei with a wok. Even then a flat fry pan and the large burner on an electric range does a better job, in my opinion. Cook small quantities!

Edited by Ben Hong (log)
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If you are cooking any more than a plateful (one serving) of food in a wok in a typical domestic setting you will NOT be able to maintain the high temps required for chowing (stirfrying).

I have never, ever been in a Chinese home that had anything other than a standard gas cooker. I doubt if I could buy a high btu burner here.

...your dancing child with his Chinese suit.

 

The Kitchen Scale Manifesto

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Poor me...I have only the Jenn-air electric countertop burners. I DO miss my restaurant wok burners. No flames in my house. :sad:

I'd been a "must get that order out quickly" kinda person, and it's taken me 5 years to slow down to "it's ok. I'm no longer a restauranteur" person. I do cook in smaller portions now and turn out decent food on my electric stove with 14" carbon-steel woks.

I let my flat-bottom wok sit right on the element. I can put it on to heat up while I finish prepping (prep. area right behind me). By the time I finish, the wok is hot, ready for the oil. It only takes seconds then for the oil to come to a "haze", ready for the salt and garlic before the main ingredients. I think someone stressed before, that your vegetables must be dry before adding to the wok. And, I certainly agree with Jo-mel on the meat issue.

I'd love to have a gas range, but compared to my s-i-l's, I'd much rather my Jenn-air. It takes longer to heat up (1982 - came with the house), but it gives me good heat if I'm patient. The only complaint I have is the embedded elements modual. It takes longer (not like the newer models) and never gets as hot. I'd love to change the modual, but it's very expensive. So, I will contend with what I have as long as I don't get any complaints. :biggrin:

Dejah

www.hillmanweb.com

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Takadi, I think I had the same perception as you when I first started cooking with a wok: hot equals better. But now with a lot more experience cooking from reliable books, and observing friends/friends parents cooking, I think its something of a misnomer.

In formal restaurant cooking, there is complicated qualification scheme for different types of cooking/different levels of heat, and the explosive super high heat your talking about is only one technique in a range of many. It definitely produces fantastic results for certain dishes with the right setup and a lot of skill, but wok cooking is by no means limited to this explosive frying. I also might add that you can't directly equate BTU to heat output; it's more complicated on that. It's going to depend on the individual characteristics of your heat source, pan, setup, etc.

My advice to you would be to pursue that explosive heat, but not to obsess about it. Sometimes you have to make compromises to get a good result. I obsessed too much in the beginning, and I think it really hampered my progress until I finally let go, and now I feel i have a much better understanding of the basic principles.

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My advice to you would be to pursue that explosive heat, but not to obsess about it.

:biggrin: You sound like my mother.

I kind of see it like singing. You can always pursue opera, broadway, musicals, but alot of people see shimmering stars and American Idol. Of course it's kind of vain and shallow, but I'm only 21 so I can excuse myself for slight lack of maturity :smile:

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