Wednesday, March 19, 2014

Cooking Enabled - Return of the Wok

With our new gas powered cook top with super hot 16000 BTU burner, I have gotten back to real cooking for the first time since the remodel began.  AND I brought back into action my beloved Wok.  The story behind the wok is that it is the one and only thing I ever purchased from an infomercial. 

It was during the late 80's.  I was doing something in our kitchen at our house in Columbia, MD on a Saturday afternoon.  The kids were doing something and for some reason this infomercial was playing.  I started to pay attention.  They were talking about the virtues of a real Chinese wok.  That they were hand made and that they had thicker bottoms than sides and this led to better heat distribution, etc, etc and this is essential to get the real hot temperatures that create that distinctive Chinese stir fried flavor. 

I'm watching the video of the workmen pounding out the woks as I am dialing the 1-800 number.  As they show the wok in action, I'm placing my order.  "Of course I want the extra bamboo steamers at only some nominal cost."

Truth be told, the wok was everything it was cracked up to be.  It totally changed how my Asian food came out.  With its adapter ring I made it work fine on the old style electric stoves we had.  But when we moved to our current house, we got one of the ceramic smooth top stove and I could no longer use the wok.  So it has sat idle for 13 years.

But today, it was called out of retirement and it was as if it had never been gone.  Dinner was Cambodian and it was great.

2 comments:

alexis said...

wow! I had no idea the wok had been out of action for so long. Looking forward to seeing it do its thing when we are there ages from now.

terri said...

I just used my wok for the first time in at least 10 years. But my food wasn't all that impressive. The wok was a wedding shower gift and I'm pretty sure it's a cheapy. Sounds like yours was a great purchase!