You’ve taught me about a kitchen tool I hadn’t previously heard of, a Tutove. Thank you. I like learning new things.
You don’t need a high output burner to cook with a wok.
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Au contraire. By all means, please repeat your bold claim to wok chefs at Asian restaurants and marvel at their looks of astonishment.
You are talking about restaurant cooking. You realize how many people use woks in their home on regular gas stoves?
Point being the idea that in order to use a wok at home you need a high output burner is false.
You indeed don’t need a high output burner to cook with a wok. Achieving ‘wok hei’ is a different story, and highly debated…
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Not sure I see any point in cooking with a wok without the probability of achieving wok hei. Why not just use a frying pan or saucier? Better contact with most burners and more surface area to brown meats & veggies.
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Still think the shape has something to offer even if you’re not on a high output burner, eg pushing stuff up the cooler sides.
Kenji would probably argue that something close to wok hei can be achieved by using a kitchen torch on the wok, so there are ways to compensate for burner output.
That said, while I understand your desire to make the best possible version of a wok dish, I think most of East Asia gets by just fine without high output burners and still manage to eat…
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Sure, but most east Asians aren’t trying to cook authentic beef chow fun on their electric/induction cooktops at home.
Using a wok without a high-output dedicated burner is akin to driving a Ferrari when the speed limit is 80 kph and all the roads are straight.
Chinese cooking is not defined by wok hei. There are millions of people cooking with a wok at home and they will tell you that homestyle cooking is perfectly delicious without wok hei and they don’t expect it for their home cooking.
“When I asked my friends Steph Li and Chris Thomas, the couple in Shenzhen, China, behind the popular YouTube channel Chinese Cooking Demystified their response jumped between descriptive and evocative. “Wok hei is this ethereal thing,” Steph said. It’s “that taste of the first bite of a hot restaurant stir-fry. It’s got that taste of the restaurant oil, the slightly deeper restaurant browning, the heavier restaurant seasoning.
“Seeing home cooks outside of China being obsessed about wok hei has always been kind of bewildering to me,” she added.
She has a point. Most folks in China don’t have restaurant-style equipment at home, and even the concept of wok hei is not widely known outside of the Cantonese regions of Southeastern China. But it is perhaps because most Chinese food in America has its earliest roots in Cantonese cuisine that American diners so strongly associate good Chinese food with that flavor.”
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Some of us would still be happy just to be driving a Ferrari, but hey, different strokes…
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Sure, you can use a wok to cook dishes that don’t require a wok, but what exactly would be the point? It seems like a way to avoid buying different pieces of cookware, in which case – you’re probably visiting the wrong HO forum.
To use a wok to its full potential, particularly when stir-frying, requires a high-output burner.
Your making the western mindset assumption that the wok is the last piece of cookware added to a batterie rather than the first.
There will be many Asians who started with their wok, and would argue that they don’t need different pieces of western cookware because their work can do most of it well enough
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Speaking only for myself, I want a high-output burner because (1) i use a large wok (2) when I want heat I want it now not later and I want it to stay hot (3) waiting for some dishes to boil or maintain a boil is problematic.
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I totally get why people want a high output burner. If you have the option, then it’s a great thing to get.
But I do struggle with the notion that you couldn’t possibly cook without one. That’s the same as saying you can’t drive unless its a formula1 race or eat unless its Michelin.
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The cookware shape itself can determine both the optimal distribution of heat as well as the dishes best suited to be cooked within. Of course you can cook with a wok on a weak cooktop – but what’s the point? Other shapes/styles would be better suited.
The only practical argument to make is that it’s driven by budgetary or space considerations.
Just the opposite, actually.
A 10-15k BTU cooktop might not be high enough output to achieve wok hei, but I can assure you that it’s plenty powerful to cook a nice meal with a wok. In my opinion there would be no need to compensate for anything, and nothing gained from moving to a frying pan
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Nothing lost, either. And potentially much to be gained from having better contact with the burner.
Well, you’d have lost the temperature differentials up the sides of the wok - which interestingly enough are important to achieve wok hei according to Kenji (sorry to keep quoting him)
My understanding is that wok hei comes from the combustion of oil particles within the wok during the cooking process at high temps, specifically 200°C or so, along with the concomitant chemical reactions such as Maillard and caramelization. Temperature differentials just allow things up on the sidewalls not to burn, but at 10-15K BTU this isn’t super likely anyway.
You could achieve a similar effect with either a flat-bottomed saucier from France or saltapasta from Italy, both of which would capture more of your cooktop’s BTU output than a carbon steel wok.
