I have a love affair with Asian food. Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, Malaysian, Burmese – it’s doesn’t matter. It’s all my favorite. One of the best days I ever had during a cruise vacation was in Acapulco. The cruise ship bartender let it slip that the Filipino staff were all going ashore to eat restaurant owned by an ex-Holland America Filipino steward who had jumped ship a few years back. We tagged along and sat happily on white, plastic chairs gorging ourselves on guinataang hipon, pancit and lumpia. I like Mexican food, but this qualified as one of the best meals I’ve ever had in Mexico.
I TRY to cook Asian food at home, pretending to be Yan Can Cook or Ming Tai. It helps that we have a gigantic Asian grocery store nearby, Lee-Lee Oriental Supermarket. My Thai soups come out very well, my curries are serviceable, and I do a very good spicy peanut sauce to go with my satay.
However, my stir-fry is always soggy, runny piles of meat and veg. They taste okay, but the look awful. (Sorry, folks, no photo’s allowed.) It’s not that I’m over-cooking them. It’s not that I’m adding too much oil or soy sauce or some other liquid seasoning. It’s not the wok I’m using, because I’ve tried several pieces of cookware, finally deciding that my All Clad Chef’s Pan & Wok worked as good as any and it looked better on my pot rack than most of the standard issue black woks.
The culprit is the electric stove. My magical Maytag does not stir-fry. I don’t blame Maytag – it’s the temperature lag that is inherent in all electric cook-tops. Gas heat just stays hot, very hot, until YOU turn down the knob. Electric cook-tops heat like a see-saw, heating up, cooling down. Essentially, I’m boiling instead of stir-frying.
After discovering that it would cost thousands to covert to gas, I’ve adapted. I stir-fry in smaller batches. I’ve considered one of these small Portable Table Top Burners
So how do you cook-top-challenged gourmets make your stir-fry’s and other dishes that require high heat? Inquiring minds want to know.
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Well, I have gas, so I don’t have as much of an issue, but the size of the pan will definitely make a difference, A large Wok takes a lot of heat, and dissipates it rapidly.
There is no rule that says you have to use a Wok. Sure it makes it easier to contain a large meal, but a smaller Frying pan would probably do nicely. You can use multiple pans for meat and Veggies to keep everyting crispy, then combine in the larger pan at the end. I haven’t tried this, since I have gas and get pretty good results with my WOK, but have heard that this technique works fine. Oh yeah, if you use a WOK, lose the ring, but the WOK, right on the burner. A flat bottom WOK, works better for that.
Pablo
A woman after my own heart! I LOVE asian food…thai, sushi and chinese my favorites. I dont often cook these at home as it is always better when we go out for it! LOL
When in college a group of us used to get together and do a big chinese (woks and stirfry) cookout. We made wontons, soup, eggrolls, stirfrys etc. Those were some good times.