No longer a virgin wok user

Cafe Society
1

I’ve had a Calphalon wok for several years, but until tonight just kept it on the kitchen wall with the rest of the Calphalon.

I did a little snooping online, and came up with a rather generic stir-fry recipe. Here are the ingredients, in the order they were added:

Oil (combination of olive and sesame)
Garlic
Ginger
Scallions
Salt
Pepper
Dill
Cubed chicken breast

(Put those aside)

Celery
Carrots
Broccoli
Cauliflower
Snow peas
Red and Yellow sweet peppers
Crimini mushrooms
Can of stir-fry veggies (mostly bean sprouts)

I learned that it’s not enough to know the order of ingredients, you also need to know the timing. For example, I should have let the celery and carrots cook a little longer, before adding the rest of the veggies. Consequently, by the time the celery and carrots were done, the rest of the veggies looked more like chop suey.

It came out not too bad, in spite of the overcooked veggies. I did have to add some teriyaki sauce at the table. My partner loved it, but he loves everything I cook, which is a mixed blessing.

2

Sesame oil should be added at the end of cooking. Heating it makes it lose its flavor.

3

Thanks. That explains why I couldn’t taste it.

4

Why dill? Seems out of place to me. If you want something herbaceous, add fresh cilantro or Thai basil at the end.

Stir fry is a great, easy, quick meal. We always have fresh noodles in the freezer - just thaw in hot water and throw in at the end of cooking. Quicker than rice!

5

I’d do them in a different order because of the time it takes to cook, and I’d use a different oil, like peanut or grapeseed so that it can take the high temperatures.

What I do: Put the wok on medium high. Add a high temp oil. Get that hot. Then add the chicken or other protein. Sear and cook, putting in a seasoning sauce when it’s almost done. Remove. Add a bit more oil (usually), make sure the pan is still hot, throw in onions and the longer-cooking veggies like carrots, cook those for a while then add in the shorter-cooking things. Add garlic and ginger last. Put the meat back in, add more seasoning sauce if you’re gonna, toss it all together until it’s nice and hot, serve and eat.

6

Puffing up rice noodles is fun. Surprised me the first time I did it because I didn’t know how big they would get.

I also learned to very careful with anything wet. Water/oil splatters from a wok seem to be more troublesome than other cooking pans. ymmv

I use canola or olive oil at the beginning, then add the pricy sesame oil near the end of everything, like said above. I also like using the pepper and/or garlic infused oils for cooking the animal flesh (bird, water breathers, pig, cows) when I’m going for a hot & spicy flavor. Sometimes, I’ll wok in sliced peppers and garlic myself at the start to flavor the oil a bit.

7

Wait, what?

8

Anyone else read the thread title and think “well, inviting her over to your place for dinner obviously worked out”?

9

I was wondering if the OP only used ravished woks now.

10

As jsgoddess noted above, use a different oil.

Take a minute or two at a health-food store (or on-line) and read up about cooking oils. Basically, there are those used for high temperature and those used for flavor. I suspect there’s really a spectrum there, but you get the idea. Sesame is definitely a flavor oil.

Wok cooking is typically high-heat due to the concave (parabolic?) shape. Sometimes I call it ‘flash cooking’ because you get your stuff in and out of there in a flash. That means if you want veggies to be soft you have to start them early or pre-cook them to just-below your desired softness before throwing them in. The reverse is also true; if you want your snow peas snappy, toss them in last.

There’s another thread (or a few) around here about wok cooking. In one of them I recommended keeping a water & cornstarch solution in a squeezy bottle in the fridge. You squirt it into your soupy creations at the end to thicken it all to a chinese stew-type of consistency. Since I no longer use my wok quite so frequently, I tend to just separate out 4 ounces of chicken broth (I’m using the other 8 oz anyway) and mix a heaping tablespoon (or two) of cornstarch into that, then give it a final stir and drizzle it into my creations at the end. It’s more flavorful that way, but I’d never recommend just keeping a starch-and-chicken-broth mix around for more than a day, even in the fridge.

There’s another thread around here about using chicken thighs. I threw a basic wok recipe with suggested variants in there so I’ll be lazy and refrain from republishing it here.

You might go to an Asian grocery or imports store and look for a device that goes around the stove burner. It’s basically a big fold-out piece of stiff aluminum for catching splatters. I use it to keep the walls cleaner, though the stove itself still needs cleaning after I’ve tossed things around. I’ve never seen them in regular American grocery stores.

Have fun!

–G!
My neighbor didn’t quite understand
When I offered to Wok his dog…

11

Or you could cut the celery and carrots into half the size of the other veggies if you wanted them to cook together. If the sesame oil is light, you might be able to cook with it. Roasted sesame oil is a condiment, you use a few drops to flavor your cooked dishes.