Should I buy a flat bottomed wok?

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AT5760

AT5760

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The title says it all. Based on recommendations here and other places, I bought Every Grain of Rice. I plan on trying to do one meal a week from the book and it seems like having a wok would be a good idea. BUT, I don't currently have a gas cooking source (charcoal grill and electric stove). So, do I get one, or just make do with a carbon steel skillet?
 
get a propane tank, a big burner and a carbon wok, please get a burner with really good heat capacity (think 8KW or more). You probably will find out real soon that your stir frying is best done with LOTS of ventilation, AKA outside.
 
While I don’t have that particular book by Dunlop, I do know lots of her recipes as she has written for a newspaper I read. A lot of Chinese recipes do not require a wok, e.g. slow cooked recipes can easily be made in enameled cast iron, aluminum, copper and so on.

I cook Chinese (Cantonese) once in a while, as well as Malaysian, Thai and Indian, and I never use a wok. Also accept that stir frying at home just doesn’t get you restaurant quality food unless you go the way Marcel is suggesting.
 
MarcelNL said:
get a propane tank, a big burner and a carbon wok, please get a burner with really good heat capacity (think 8KW or more). You probably will find out real soon that your stir frying is best done with LOTS of ventilation, AKA outside.
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The burners that are sold for deep frying turkeys are powerful enough and has the right size and shape to hold a wok. Not as ideal as with a wok ring, but an affordable option.
 
AT5760 said:
The title says it all. Based on recommendations here and other places, I bought Every Grain of Rice. I plan on trying to do one meal a week from the book and it seems like having a wok would be a good idea. BUT, I don't currently have a gas cooking source (charcoal grill and electric stove). So, do I get one, or just make do with a carbon steel skillet?
Click to expand...

Deep skillet works fine for stir frying, I often just use a deep Paderno stainless—a wok is not essential. Just gotta get the pan very hot. When I ad my ingredients, sometimes I'll wait a bit before shaking the pan to develop a some char, pretty much the same effect as the 'wok hei.' End result more important than the journey.
 
Mine is a Foker, I cut off the inner part of the grid holding pans to accomodate the Wok better. A Carbon Wok is quite unstable when empty, hold the handle when heating oil/fat until something more substantial is added.
 
I use my flat bottomed woks a lot. I have a 12 inch non stick and a 14 inch carbon, they work well on my electric stove. I use the nonstick for raw chicken and reheating left overs and the carbon for deep frying and stir frying.
 
i survived a decade using a big skillet. i had to cook the dish in parts and bring it all together at the end. it worked fine.

one meal a week, i would rig up the charcoal grill. a grill is super effective.
 
boomchakabowwow said:
i survived a decade using a big skillet. i had to cook the dish in parts and bring it all together at the end. it worked fine.
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Yea, that’s what I do at the moment. Cast iron or carbon. It can certainly get nuclear if I put it on high for a while first. It’d be better to be able to flip the pan while keeping in contact with the heat. But it works ok. I’m no stir fry expert though.
 
ian said:
Yea, that’s what I do at the moment. Cast iron or carbon. It can certainly get nuclear if I put it on high for a while first. It’d be better to be able to flip the pan while keeping in contact with the heat. But it works ok. I’m no stir fry expert though.
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I have a good carbon wok, but my cheap a** Hotpoint gas range doesn't crank out enough BTUs to justify using the wok—a skillet is far more successful with my current range. My great grandma, grandma and mom preferred using pots and skillets for doing traditional Chinese cookery—adapting to kitchens away from the motherland, getting the same results as with a wok.
 
ian said:
Cast iron or carbon. It can certainly get nuclear if I put it on high for a while first.
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I've done this for about a decade as well. You can even use stainless steel if you think scrubbing with bkf is better than washing two pans. The key is high thermal mass and a small amount of ingredients.

A warning about induction: be-careful preheating on max on an induction stove. It can warp a carbon steel skillet and it takes like an hour heating and pounding on it with a rubber mallet to get it to sit flat again. Pre-heating on med for a few minutes then cranking it up until it smokes works for me.
 
I like the Iwatani burner but if you run it on high for very long, the butane canister cools off and the volume of gas coming out drops, so it's not as powerful; cooking larger batches of stir fried foods can be challenging, even if you take your time and cook a small amount of ingredients at a time. It's also not cheap (though it's not super expensive) so if you're looking into gas burners for wok cooking, you should also consider a proper wok burner (which can also serve as a turkey fryer/big pot boiler). Nothing quite compares to a high output wok burner, though you're limited to cooking outdoors. That said, I love my Iwatani burner and use it all the time to sear stuff outside. It's also good for picnics/cookouts/camping. And cooking with a donabe.
 
I had a Iwatani for my coffee roasting, but stopped using it due to the freezing of canisters, It's also nowhere near enough powerful for serious stir frying (retrospectively comparing it was about 5KW, same as my in house main gas burner), the Foker finally has emough capacity....but there are bigger ones :p I WANT THAT MIDDLE ONE

 
I have a 60k outdoor burner. Nothing beats a proper wok with a high heat burner and the proper wok utensils that fit the curvature just right
 
slickmamba said:
Nothing beats a proper wok with a high heat burner and the proper wok utensils that fit the curvature just right
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Unless its raining. Or snowing! :p

But seriously, I've always wanted to get an outdoor wok burner and a conical wok. I should have done it in the spring. Oh well, next year.
 
I cook outside with a propane wok burner and a large, thin Chinese cast iron wok during the summer some but most of the year here in the North West I'm inside with a flat bottom Japanese Yamada wok. Very versatile cooking utensil and the best I've found for an electric range.
 
I have the 65k BTU burner from this video, use it with my 27cm and 36cm yamada woks, also some cast iron pans. Works well except when there is a wind. I want to see if I can get a custom wok ring modification, sometimes the handles like to cause round bottom woks to rotate downward.

for “flat bottom” I have a debuyer “country pan” which also works on my glass top indoors, but there’s really no comparison to a wok burner.

MarcelNL said:
I had a Iwatani for my coffee roasting, but stopped using it due to the freezing of canisters, It's also nowhere near enough powerful for serious stir frying (retrospectively comparing it was about 5KW, same as my in house main gas burner), the Foker finally has emough capacity....but there are bigger ones :p I WANT THAT MIDDLE ONE

Click to expand...
 
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