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The lil tofu bits and peanuts are the best part of granny sauce imo
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Feb 6, 2015 23:08
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GrAviTy84 posted:If I cook a steak indoors I set off my smoke detector for pretty much an hour straight even with all the windows open and fans on them I used to do the same thing so now I have to disconnect the detectors before I throw the beef down.
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Feb 7, 2015 05:46
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If you guys handle wok related poo poo, wear long sleeves because hot splashing oil sucks. Don't be like those wife beater wearing restaurant dudes with scars and callouses over the arm and hands. Think they all burnt their finger tips as well. Oh and toss with 2 hands. You can get pretty bad RSI. In terms of less offensive after-cook smelling meats, seems like chicken is the way to go. Add mushrooms or green veggies to soak up the grease
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Feb 7, 2015 06:45
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GrAviTy84 posted:Hey, I think I'll contribute to this thread again! Thanks for the recipe! For the fermented black beans and sichuan chili bean paste, I have a bottle of this: http://www.amazon.com/Lee-Kum-Kee-Ground-Sauce/dp/B00FZH2OWK in my pantry. Is this either of the bean sauces you mentioned? Or do I need to go hunting for other pastes/beans? If the bean paste isn't right, can I add chilis to it instead of buying a new bottle of chili bean paste?
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Feb 7, 2015 16:56
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One of these days my wok will be as black as that and I will have a house with an outdoor range so I can really have some fun.
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Feb 8, 2015 02:38
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Kind of weird but can anyone recommend a book about historical Chinese cooking techniques? For instance I know that stir fry requires incredibly powerful heat but how was that achieved before pressurized gas? Stuff like that. I might be a huge dork.
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Feb 8, 2015 06:49
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Adult Sword Owner posted:Kind of weird but can anyone recommend a book about historical Chinese cooking techniques? For instance I know that stir fry requires incredibly powerful heat but how was that achieved before pressurized gas? Stuff like that. I might be a huge dork. One of my cookbooks explains it... pretty much as you suspect, they just sat on huge clay stoves with hot coals heating up the woks. If I had to guess, today's expectation of "perfect" wok-hei didn't really evolve until the invention of the gas cooker.
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Feb 8, 2015 07:19
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This is going to sound silly, but please bear with me. How do you wash your rice? Do you just put a cloth in a strainer and run water through, or what? I just bought a big bag of rice from Carrefour, with plans to start making more local dishes at home.
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Feb 8, 2015 08:52
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shaitan posted:One of my cookbooks explains it... pretty much as you suspect, they just sat on huge clay stoves with hot coals heating up the woks. If I had to guess, today's expectation of "perfect" wok-hei didn't really evolve until the invention of the gas cooker. That's cool, anything is really interesting to me
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Feb 8, 2015 09:10
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shaitan posted:One of my cookbooks explains it... pretty much as you suspect, they just sat on huge clay stoves with hot coals heating up the woks. If I had to guess, today's expectation of "perfect" wok-hei didn't really evolve until the invention of the gas cooker. So, basically a kamado / big green egg?
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Feb 8, 2015 09:31
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You can still get pretty good Wok Hei with a coal fired wok- the smokiness from the coals also plays a part. There's a very big and renowned Pad Thai place in Bangkok that uses coal fired stoves only, and they achieve good Wok Hei. 
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Feb 8, 2015 10:36
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YF19pilot posted:This is going to sound silly, but please bear with me. How do you wash your rice? Do you just put a cloth in a strainer and run water through, or what? I just bought a big bag of rice from Carrefour, with plans to start making more local dishes at home. If you own a fine mesh stainer you can just use that without a cloth.
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Feb 8, 2015 11:41
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I remember those Chinese charcoal stoves growing up in Malaysia. They look like little clay chimneys. If you want to give it a shot, I think you can improvise one out of a clay pot. Or order one online. http://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Stove_Thailand.jpg Edit: if you want to pump up the heat in the traditional Chinese way, and this will work for a charcoal BBQ too, get a big fan (traditionally made from palm fronds) and fan it like crazy. I mean, people used to smelt iron this way, so there is definitely potential for serious wok hei. Edit2: if you want to be a lazy rear end American, experiment with a blow dryer or leaf blower. ascendance fucked around with this message at 15:57 on Feb 8, 2015 |
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Feb 8, 2015 15:50
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YF19pilot posted:This is going to sound silly, but please bear with me. How do you wash your rice? Do you just put a cloth in a strainer and run water through, or what? I just bought a big bag of rice from Carrefour, with plans to start making more local dishes at home. Put it all in a fine mesh strainer, run water through it while working the rice with one hand.
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Feb 8, 2015 15:58
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YF19pilot posted:This is going to sound silly, but please bear with me. How do you wash your rice? Do you just put a cloth in a strainer and run water through, or what? I just bought a big bag of rice from Carrefour, with plans to start making more local dishes at home.
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Feb 8, 2015 16:00
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Pookah posted:ONE OF US Thanks, that was really helpful....now I need to but the black bean version as well!
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Feb 8, 2015 17:42
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Biomute posted:I made dry-fried chicken today. It was pretty weird and tasted like bacon. While I do love chili bean sauce, I think I prefer this cooking technique for beef, with a sweet sauce. Anyone have any good recipes with chilli bean sauce? I loving love the stuff but don't find many recipes using it. Especially chicken (and is it used with noodle stir fries at all?) It's probably just a case of substituting oyster for it in a regular stir fry, but then at what point would you add it?
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Feb 8, 2015 18:16
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ascendance posted:I remember those Chinese charcoal stoves growing up in Malaysia. That's basically a kamado without the lid. It fits the wok better than North American kamados where the wok tends to disappear into the stove.
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Feb 8, 2015 18:17
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shaitan posted:One of my cookbooks explains it... pretty much as you suspect, they just sat on huge clay stoves with hot coals heating up the woks. If I had to guess, today's expectation of "perfect" wok-hei didn't really evolve until the invention of the gas cooker. Those coal burning ones actually put most gas burners to shame with heat output. Can easily get up to four digits no problem. Popular wok hack is to cook on a charcoal chimney.
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Feb 8, 2015 18:18
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GrAviTy84 posted:Those coal burning ones actually put most gas burners to shame with heat output. Can easily get up to four digits no problem. Yeah you guys are correct, I was thinking that that setup wasn't common in your typical house like how it can be today... but I guess coal/charcoal setups like that were probably cheap enough to maintain. I'll go digging around my cookbooks and see what the story I read was.. I believe it was from the book "Breath of a Wok"
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Feb 8, 2015 18:50
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They still cook on charcoal chimnies in back alleys all over China. It'll give you cancer but so will the rice so who cares! :shurg:
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Feb 8, 2015 22:02
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shaitan posted:Yeah you guys are correct, I was thinking that that setup wasn't common in your typical house like how it can be today... but I guess coal/charcoal setups like that were probably cheap enough to maintain. I'll go digging around my cookbooks and see what the story I read was.. I believe it was from the book "Breath of a Wok"
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Feb 9, 2015 01:01
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shaitan posted:Yeah you guys are correct, I was thinking that that setup wasn't common in your typical house like how it can be today... but I guess coal/charcoal setups like that were probably cheap enough to maintain. I'll go digging around my cookbooks and see what the story I read was.. I believe it was from the book "Breath of a Wok" I have this book, it's pretty neat and well worth reading
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Feb 9, 2015 19:21
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BraveUlysses posted:I have this book, it's pretty neat and well worth reading Yeah it was my first introduction into Chinese cooking and taught me a lot of the basics. I've been to China a few times this past year for work and its always nice impressing clients with my limited (but apparantly impressive for a westerner) knowledge of traditional Chinese food 
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Feb 9, 2015 19:25
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Most street vendors and a lot of people outside of the cities are still not using gas in China just because of how cheap coal is. Coal here is usually crushed into a powder and then pressed into these pellets to maximize surface area and speed up the burning process. The result is an incredibly hot fire that creates its own convection currents to increase the heat even more. These pellets cost about .8 jiao (13cents) or so and burn for about an hour or more providing enough heat to cook an entire dinner.  http://www.mit.edu/people/robot/travels/china_carbon/china_carbon.html It is only in the new highrise apartments and big cities with tougher pollution controls that people use gas over coal.  PS dude makes awesome fried noodles Edit: This technology actually came from Japan, but don't tell the Chinese that ! Aero737 fucked around with this message at 08:00 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 07:55
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Holy crap! I had no idea they used actual coal dust to cook with. I wonder what that does to smoked meat? Neat pellet design though. It's giving me impure thoughts about hacking my kamado to cook tandoori. Or smelt iron.
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Feb 10, 2015 08:08
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Mom made steamed grouper last night. It was pretty good and didn't cost too much money. It was too small for the restaurant. and Vegetable stew. But she threw in some salted pork liver sausage in it as flavouring.  Yeah, it's a teflon wok 
caberham fucked around with this message at 10:55 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 08:25
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That looks more enamel than Teflon
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Feb 10, 2015 09:52
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Aero737 posted:Most street vendors and a lot of people outside of the cities are still not using gas in China just because of how cheap coal is. China loves coal and has loved coal forever One time I was doing what you do on Wikipedia and reading up on cooking with briquettes and found the section re: China http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Briquette#Use_in_China
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Feb 10, 2015 16:07
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caberham posted:
I'm like, 99% sure that's ceramic coating which is PTFE/PFOA free for precisely the reasons why teflon is bad. Also looks more like a saucepot in profile than a wok. edit: like dis one: http://www.amazon.com/Vinaroz-Aluminum-Ceramic-Coating-30-Cm/dp/B004GTN6I4 teflon coating is black and sparkly and I've been seeing all the cheap nonstick woks getting replaced by ones similar to this at all the asian markets around here. GrAviTy84 fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 20:11
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So what happens to a ceramic coating at high temperatures? It's safe?
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Feb 10, 2015 20:23
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Nickoten posted:So what happens to a ceramic coating at high temperatures? It's safe? It's safer to higher temps. I think in the 800 range. I think it delaminates from the base metal higher than that. Certainly better than teflon from a health POV, probably fine for a home burner, probably not fine for a coal or high intensity gas burner. as per Teflon though (and enamelware like Staub/Creuset/Lodge/Cuisinart) it's more than just the material, it's also the process of manufacture. Some will be better/more durable than others. also durability. You're not gonna be thwacking metal wok spades at either, but that's not really that big of a deal. GrAviTy84 fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Feb 10, 2015 |
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Feb 10, 2015 20:25
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That sounds great. I'm actually in the market for a secondary wok that I can put all the vinegar and boiling water into that I want without worrying about re-seasoning or anything like that. Would you recommend that one from Amazon for lower heat cooking? I'm *this* close to ordering it. I mean, I have a teflon frying pan for eggs and what not, but it would be nice to have something deeper.
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Feb 10, 2015 20:28
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If you're boiling or using it lower temperatures, why does it need to be a wok vs a regular pot?
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Feb 10, 2015 20:30
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Nickoten posted:That sounds great. I'm actually in the market for a secondary wok that I can put all the vinegar and boiling water into that I want without worrying about re-seasoning or anything like that. Would you recommend that one from Amazon for lower heat cooking? I'm *this* close to ordering it. I mean, I have a teflon frying pan for eggs and what not, but it would be nice to have something deeper. I don't have first hand experience with ceramics, just what I've read, but this one says safe to 850F http://www.amazon.com/GreenPan-CW000385-002-Dishwasher-Thermolon-Non-Stick/dp/B00JJGZS62/ref=pd_sbs_k_3?ie=UTF8&refRID=0BDF81KYAWZ9D399RNQF I also like that the handle is all metal so it can get oven/broiler duty. Maybe someone with irl experience can rec a better one.
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Feb 10, 2015 20:31
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Adult Sword Owner posted:If you're boiling or using it lower temperatures, why does it need to be a wok vs a regular pot? I'm still in school so I like reducing the number of pots and pans I have for different purposes. If I could find something like the non-stick Japanese wok I used to use (kinda looked like this http://www.amazon.com/Amore-Kitchen...rds=ceramic+wok but probably had teflon), I could use it for a pretty wide range of purposes. Plus, some Caribbean dishes involve frying aromatics and meat, then adding a bunch of water to boil the meat the rest of the way. I use a relatively light wok-like deep aluminum (I think?) pot for this, but if I could do this with a nonstick pot it would be nice.
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Feb 10, 2015 20:34
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Nickoten posted:I'm still in school so I like reducing the number of pots and pans I have for different purposes. If I could find something like the non-stick Japanese wok I used to use (kinda looked like this http://www.amazon.com/Amore-Kitchen...rds=ceramic+wok but probably had teflon), I could use it for a pretty wide range of purposes. what about stainless clad Al? http://www.amazon.com/Cooks-Standar...inless+clad+wok not nonstick but guaranteed not to chip or flake like teflon/ceramic might.
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Feb 10, 2015 20:39
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That also seemed like a good choice. Is chipping and flaking a concern if I primarily use bamboo spatulas though? I mean I have some strong metal spoons that I like using with Caribbean cooking but I'm pretty accustomed to the bamboo stuff at this point.
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Feb 10, 2015 20:55
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Go with stainless for your basic pots and pans. A decent set will be 100-200, which is pricey when you're in school, but you only need one set ever.
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Feb 10, 2015 21:28
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GrAviTy84 posted:I'm like, 99% sure that's ceramic coating which is PTFE/PFOA free for precisely the reasons why teflon is bad. Also looks more like a saucepot in profile than a wok. Pretty sure they were talking about the big Teflon wok with the steamed fish in it right above the picture of the ceramic pot.
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Feb 10, 2015 22:29
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