"socks" <[email hidden]> wrote in message
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Quoted message said:i think i might do a little chinese cooking again. i was
never really
super
Quoted message said:at it, but had the wok, tried to do what was told, etc.
the thing is, last time around (a couple years ago) i
brought out my original wok and found rust (i live by the
beach), so i went out and
bought
Quoted message said:a new cast iron wok. it was marketed by Joice Chen at
the time.
it has its pluses and minuses. the plus is that once hot
it hold the heat no matter how much food you add. the main
disadvantage is that it weighs 9-10 pounds. no lie, i just
weighed it. kinda hard to one-arm it with a bunch of fried
rice on board. it makes great fried rice though ... even
if
Quoted message said:the cast-iron surface makes the egg-scrambling step hard
(better off doing that in another pan).
so i wondered, do other people use/like big ol' cast
iron woks?
i'm tempted to buy a small steel wok for quick/small
recipes.
I don't se the point in cast iron or any other heavy
material for a wok. The whole point about wok cooking is
speed. You need to be able to change the heat quickly, turn
it up or turn it down it needs to happen fast. The only way
to do this is on a gas burner of sufficient power and with a
thin ( ie the traditional mild-steel) wok.
The point about heavy based pans is that they spread the
heat out evenly so that you don't get hot spots. With a
proper wok burner you will not get bad hot spots and the
uneveness of heating that you do get doesn't matter because
you are moving the food over it so quickly. The heavy based
wok will not allow you to increase/decrease the heat
quickly as it stores heat. So you don't need a heavy wok -
the contrary.
David
