I just bought a wok last weekend and finally used it.
One video on YouTube caught my attention (which I can’t currently find, but will link later).
It’s hamburg, cooked and drained (with onion added I’d say half way through meat cooking), then green bell pepper for a few minutes with the other ingredients, then bean sprouts. All the while add soy sauce to taste.
It was good!
No, damn good!
And so easy, too. The best part, other than trying to drain hamburg grease into a baked beans can via a wok was that I got to chop some veggies! (which I enjoy with my new, sharpened knife)!
So, please indulge me with some (easier) wok recipes you may have.
Here it is: Chinese Stir Fry Recipe: Bell Peppers, Mung Beans Sprouts & Ground Beef - YouTube
Would eggs work in something like this, as in to keep the ingredients together?
Anyway, it was really good, so please post other wok recipes!
There’s another thread around here where someone was asking for suggestions on chicken thighs. My contribution to that thread is a basic wok-based foundation upon which you can build what you like. Those particular recipes essentially treat meat as just another flavorful ingredient, so you should experiment with beef and pork substitutions, as well. I’ll let you find that thread on your own.
There are two essential keys to wok work:
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the parabolic shape means heat builds up and concentrates quickly. For this reason, nut oils (usually peanut, sometimes almond, sometimes others) are used when oils are desired. Nut oils handle high temperatures without breaking down and going black. [Well, they still burn, but not as quickly as, for instance, basil oil which is used for flavor rather than heat.] In your nut oils, you can roast garlic, toast salt, stir-fry crisp veggies to a glossy coating, or fry diced meats to a well-done tenderness.
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a lot of popular chinese dishes are essentially stews made in a wok. Veggies and meat are diced and then cooked in the wok, a broth or flavorful liquid concoction is added, and then it’s all thickened. Now-a-days, the thickener is typically corn starch. A trick I learned from a restauranteur in Japan is to fill a squeezy bottle (like for ketchup and mustard at a picnic) with a pint of water and a couple tablespoons of corn starch. It just sits next to the stove all the time. When your dish is ready for thickening, grab your bottle, shake it with your thumb over the tip of the nozzle, then squirt the cornstarch/water into the broth at the bottom of the wok while stirring constantly. The liquids will thicken as they heat up. Learn to guesstimate how much is needed to achieve your preferred thickness.
With the right add-on pieces, a wok can be used for steaming, deep-frying, soup stocking, and a lot of other preparations. It can really be a universal tool, like a cast-iron skillet was for American poineers. Stews and stir-fry meals are just the start.
One of the things you might end up liking about Chinese cooking is that the results are usually intended to be eaten with chopsticks. Therefore you’ll get plenty of opportunity to play with your new knife as you chop your ingredients down to optimal cooking-and-eating size.
–G!
Tang Soo Do, Iaido, Tai Chi, Italian Fencing…I can do amazing things with a blade – I can even prepare food!
If you like Chinese lemon chicken, this is a good recipe. The wok basically acts as a deep fryer. I use more lemons than asked for because I like a very lemony flavor.