/ck/ - Food & Cooking

>cheapass owner in absolute clusterfuck 'family' restaurant finally agrees to change nearly black frier oil (must have been literally months) after multiple complaints
>bust ass cleaning it and changing it
>4 50 litre friers
>mexican linecook has just had his daughter's quinceanera
>he got her face printed on all these novelty footballs and has been trying to give them to everyone all day
>her wierd distorted face on these cheap undersized balls is quite scary
>throws one at me
>it hits the unshielded fluorescent light on the roof above the friers which shatters and rains glass into the new oil

>>11754285
Except you can't on a domestic stove.
You can't get that Wok Hei either.
I use my wok for fried noodle/ rice dishes and cooking large quantities of sauted vegetables because the shape is good for tossing stuff and it's big. And for deep frying sometimes.

I very rarely use it for meat. Because it's not actually 'wok cooking'.
You can get a stainless pan much hotter on a regular stove, because the shape is better, and the heat doesn't drop so dramatically once you put the food in (a cast iron pan will also get very hot, but you can't really toss it).

I actually can get Wok Hei on my smaller copper bottom stainless saute pan, so tossing small quantities of stirfry meat on highest flame, it will ignite on the side of the pan, and put that flavour through the whole dish (wok hei). Or, you can still get more flavour from just having the meat stick, developing a fond, developing browning, and then deglazing the pan to cook your vegetables. Cook the meat whole that way, deglaze with rice wine, cook your vegetables in that, slice the meat, and add it at the end with your sauce. More flavour. More browning. More tender meat even if you velvet. Woks are not good for deglazing, the 'non-stick' part is often bad and anything acidic will fuck your coating.

The irony is that when most people discover wok cooking they're actually taking a step away from the high heat style which defines it.