Calling woks ‘exotic forms of cooking’ when they’re (likely, given the Asian American pop.) the primary daily cooking vessel for millions of Americans, and probably a good fraction of the world population, is really a good reflection of how white-urban-American LW is.
For the record, I think everyone should switch to induction woks. Methane leaks are pretty bad for the climate. I certainly am switching to an induction wok. Still, weird to dismiss the main cooking tool of a huge groups of people as ‘exotic’.
Well there is also the question of which wok recipes specifically need that shape of pan and cannot be adapted to use flat cookware. That subset of recipes that actually require a rounded pan would be the “edge case”.
I don’t know enough about wok cooking to know if that is all of them or some of them. Or if the reason for the rounded pan is to transfer heat from a flame faster and with less fuel, which is irrelevant if you have induction.
As someone who has been forced to use flat bottom pans due to the prevalence of electric coils in rental places in the US, I can say that most stir fries do benefit from a wok, and stir-fries are the bread-and-butter of homestyle cooking in many east and southeast asian cuisines.
It’s not a make-it-or-break-it situation. The closer you get, the better; a carbon steel pan is often halfway there. A key issue in my experience is that woks allow for oil to pool even with very little oil, and stir-frying is often a hybrid sautee/shallow-fry. If you wanted to do that with a flat pan you need a metric ton of oil, which is just not good for the dish. No-one wants food to come with a pool of oil. Heat transfer is often not as important as Western cookbooks focused on wok recipes suggest, primarily because homestyle cooking is often not focused on the high heat “wok-hei” type stuff that Western cookbooks focus on. It’s likely just because people get exposed to wok cooking via restaurants in the West.
Basically, I don’t think it’s an edge case at all. There are also just various things that make me sad when I don’t have a proper wok, such as the inability to make perfectly round sunny-side-up eggs that are also perfectly browned around the edges. This is because eggs also “pool” in a wok, of course, and unlike the egg rings, a wok is quite hot all the way round. I think another crucial aspect is that many cultures care about food more than I’ve seen in the US. (just people I personally know. Not commenting on the US in general, since I am explicitly not American and I am not an expert on American culture.) Add that to the fact that people living in a foreign country are inherently more defensive about their culture, and I think it really explains why woks are a bit of a sticking point. People already have to try to keep their own culture alive, things like that make it harder.
That I have no personal experience with (yet), I haven’t switched because of a planned move. That said, I’ve never heard anything negative about induction woks except for the price. I think they just work.
Calling woks ‘exotic forms of cooking’ when they’re (likely, given the Asian American pop.) the primary daily cooking vessel for millions of Americans, and probably a good fraction of the world population, is really a good reflection of how white-urban-American LW is.
For the record, I think everyone should switch to induction woks. Methane leaks are pretty bad for the climate. I certainly am switching to an induction wok. Still, weird to dismiss the main cooking tool of a huge groups of people as ‘exotic’.
Well there is also the question of which wok recipes specifically need that shape of pan and cannot be adapted to use flat cookware. That subset of recipes that actually require a rounded pan would be the “edge case”.
I don’t know enough about wok cooking to know if that is all of them or some of them. Or if the reason for the rounded pan is to transfer heat from a flame faster and with less fuel, which is irrelevant if you have induction.
As someone who has been forced to use flat bottom pans due to the prevalence of electric coils in rental places in the US, I can say that most stir fries do benefit from a wok, and stir-fries are the bread-and-butter of homestyle cooking in many east and southeast asian cuisines.
It’s not a make-it-or-break-it situation. The closer you get, the better; a carbon steel pan is often halfway there. A key issue in my experience is that woks allow for oil to pool even with very little oil, and stir-frying is often a hybrid sautee/shallow-fry. If you wanted to do that with a flat pan you need a metric ton of oil, which is just not good for the dish. No-one wants food to come with a pool of oil. Heat transfer is often not as important as Western cookbooks focused on wok recipes suggest, primarily because homestyle cooking is often not focused on the high heat “wok-hei” type stuff that Western cookbooks focus on. It’s likely just because people get exposed to wok cooking via restaurants in the West.
Basically, I don’t think it’s an edge case at all. There are also just various things that make me sad when I don’t have a proper wok, such as the inability to make perfectly round sunny-side-up eggs that are also perfectly browned around the edges. This is because eggs also “pool” in a wok, of course, and unlike the egg rings, a wok is quite hot all the way round. I think another crucial aspect is that many cultures care about food more than I’ve seen in the US. (just people I personally know. Not commenting on the US in general, since I am explicitly not American and I am not an expert on American culture.) Add that to the fact that people living in a foreign country are inherently more defensive about their culture, and I think it really explains why woks are a bit of a sticking point. People already have to try to keep their own culture alive, things like that make it harder.
Ok. Thanks for letting me know about the “pooling” effect. How well do induction woks work compared to using a flame?
That I have no personal experience with (yet), I haven’t switched because of a planned move. That said, I’ve never heard anything negative about induction woks except for the price. I think they just work.