Or, even better (IMHO), a large (4 or 5 quart) saucier, 'specially if your working on a “flat top*” electric stove (plus every well stocked pot drawer should have a saucier anyway!)
That was a “they do exist” not an endorsement post.
Having used a round bottom carbon steel wok with a fire ring on an old school coil 'lectric the first thing I noticed was no matter how hot I got the wok it just never recovered that heat once the cooking started. Cast iron does sound a lot better for electric stove-tops of any kind.
CMC fnord!
*My Mom has had a flat top electric since they first came out, I always teased her with “I can make food on it, but there’s no way I can cook on it!”.
When we moved … we got gas :).
At our last house we had a gas cooktop and I learned to love it.
Then we moved to this place, 7 years ago, and have a traditional ceramic-spiral cooktop. It could have had gas - the house directly opposite ours does - but for whatever reason, the builder didn’t run gas into our kitchen (the furnace / water heater are both gas so it coulda been done).
I just got done scrubbing our cheapo new wok. The package did say the lacquer was food-grade, so why they insisted on the more involved cleaning process I don’t know, but I did the hot oil / scrub with steel wool step, followed by a thorough scrubbing with regular Brillo (soap-infused), then dried thoroughly, oiled it, and let it sit on the hot burner for 10 minutes per the package.
I’ll repeat that step in a bit also per instructions, then most likely cook tonight’s dinner in it.
It’s not a big deal to run gas to a kitchen in most homes, especially if there’s already gas in the house. The last couple houses I’ve lived in, I had it done, and it was ~$150 each time. Money well spent IMO.
We might have it done if we ever get around to remodelling the kitchen (something we looked into a couple of years back and decided to hold off on). The contract who was looking things over said it might be a bit of a mess in the basement since the ceilings are finished between the furnace room and the area under the kitchen, so we were (at that point) going to stick with electric.
I cook a lot of Chinese food – it’s my favorite ethnic cuisine.
I have cooked in a lot of different woks, from the regular one with the ring to go around the burner, to electric woks, but for my money, by far the best is a wok-shaped frying pan which is coated with teflon. They only cost around $25 each, and on average last around ten years before they need to be replaced. The low cost means that you can buy four or five easily. Currently, I have four, and when I’m cooking, I can do fried rice in one, usually a vegetable stir-fry in another, ginger beef in the third one, and kung pao chicken in the fourth – all burners on the stove are on the go, all at once.
