kimpossible
10-12-2004, 01:17 PM
Let's try one piece of equipment or ingredient per week. Feel free to add info, suggestions, recommend a place to buy it for cheap, add a themed recipe, tell a story - whatever. As long as it pertains to the equipment or ingredient of the week.
Woks
From Asian Recipes.com (http://www.asianrecipes.com)
The wok is the most important piece of cooking equipment in SouthEast Asia and China. If you plan to do much of this region's cooking you should invest in a good wok. A cast iron fry pan will serve in a pinch, but the rounded bottom of the wok provides a range of cooking temperatures in one pan, which can be important in stir frying.
There are many type of woks available - round- bottomed and flat-bottomed, on- handled and two-handled, mild steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and teflon coated. The most traditional is hand beaten of mild steel with a round bottom and two handles. Mild steel is preferred for its heat transfer properties; thin stamped stainless steel or aluminum just don't hold enough heat, and cast aluminum takes to long to heat upand cool down. The traditional round bottom is designed to sit in theround hole of a charcoal burner. In a modern kitchen equipped with agas stove, the round bottomed wok might fit the burners, depending onthe design of the stove. If the wok does not fit the burners, it may be placed on a wok ring. In an electic kitchen, a flat bottomed wok is best, both for stability and for heat transfer. A properly conditioned iron wok is at least as non-stick as any teflon coating ever made.
A new wok must be seasoned before use. Scrub it well with soap and water to remove any coating applied to protect it during shipping, rinse well, and dry. Place the wok over low heat, wipe lightly with vegetable oil and let stand on the heat for 10 minutes. Cool and wipe with paper towels to remove the dark film. Repeat the oiling, heating, cooling and wiping procedure until the paper towels come away clean. Once a wok has been seasoned, it should be cleaned with plain water only using a wok brush, never with soap or abrasive cleaners, then dried and oiled before storing. If the metal ever rusts, clean with steel wool or fine sand paper and re-season.
I use a wok nearly every day. Aside from some limited use I learned from my mother and grandmother, I mainly learned from my mother-in-law. Properly, most of us know that you go for carbon steel and season it and use peanut oil or some other high smoking point oil, but you don't have to.
Most home cooking is not going to require a restaurant grade fire for your wok. My mother-in-law was a food scientist as well as a good cook. I can't tell you how many health and food related articles she would clip out and stick on the fridge, or how often she would alter cooking methods or ingredients ever so slightly in order to make them healthier according to the latest food science news.
Moral of the story is, if you want to go all out for carbon steel and you have the fire to use it, by all means, go for it. But you can get by decently with the alternatives out there. Use whatever best suits your cooking purposes.
On a daily basis cooking together as a family, we got by with a flat-bottomed, non-stick wok on an old stove with electric burners. No peanut oil but a lot of olive oil, from the big Costco jugs of olive oil or corn oil (for vitamin E).
I miss those days. :smile:
mod note: cleavers, electric pans (yosenabe and sukiyaki), rice cookers, water heaters, steamers
Woks
From Asian Recipes.com (http://www.asianrecipes.com)
The wok is the most important piece of cooking equipment in SouthEast Asia and China. If you plan to do much of this region's cooking you should invest in a good wok. A cast iron fry pan will serve in a pinch, but the rounded bottom of the wok provides a range of cooking temperatures in one pan, which can be important in stir frying.
There are many type of woks available - round- bottomed and flat-bottomed, on- handled and two-handled, mild steel, stainless steel, aluminum, and teflon coated. The most traditional is hand beaten of mild steel with a round bottom and two handles. Mild steel is preferred for its heat transfer properties; thin stamped stainless steel or aluminum just don't hold enough heat, and cast aluminum takes to long to heat upand cool down. The traditional round bottom is designed to sit in theround hole of a charcoal burner. In a modern kitchen equipped with agas stove, the round bottomed wok might fit the burners, depending onthe design of the stove. If the wok does not fit the burners, it may be placed on a wok ring. In an electic kitchen, a flat bottomed wok is best, both for stability and for heat transfer. A properly conditioned iron wok is at least as non-stick as any teflon coating ever made.
A new wok must be seasoned before use. Scrub it well with soap and water to remove any coating applied to protect it during shipping, rinse well, and dry. Place the wok over low heat, wipe lightly with vegetable oil and let stand on the heat for 10 minutes. Cool and wipe with paper towels to remove the dark film. Repeat the oiling, heating, cooling and wiping procedure until the paper towels come away clean. Once a wok has been seasoned, it should be cleaned with plain water only using a wok brush, never with soap or abrasive cleaners, then dried and oiled before storing. If the metal ever rusts, clean with steel wool or fine sand paper and re-season.
I use a wok nearly every day. Aside from some limited use I learned from my mother and grandmother, I mainly learned from my mother-in-law. Properly, most of us know that you go for carbon steel and season it and use peanut oil or some other high smoking point oil, but you don't have to.
Most home cooking is not going to require a restaurant grade fire for your wok. My mother-in-law was a food scientist as well as a good cook. I can't tell you how many health and food related articles she would clip out and stick on the fridge, or how often she would alter cooking methods or ingredients ever so slightly in order to make them healthier according to the latest food science news.
Moral of the story is, if you want to go all out for carbon steel and you have the fire to use it, by all means, go for it. But you can get by decently with the alternatives out there. Use whatever best suits your cooking purposes.
On a daily basis cooking together as a family, we got by with a flat-bottomed, non-stick wok on an old stove with electric burners. No peanut oil but a lot of olive oil, from the big Costco jugs of olive oil or corn oil (for vitamin E).
I miss those days. :smile:
mod note: cleavers, electric pans (yosenabe and sukiyaki), rice cookers, water heaters, steamers