DON'T buy a wok before you watch this! Everything about Carbon Steel wok buying guide from the 90'.

uh the walk we're gonna cook with here is an authentic hand-hammered wok from the people's republic of china and when you think about it who should know more about woks and chinese cooking than the chinese these woks are all made by a hand are made from low carb and steel which is very like the iron we use in those old iron skillets of ours now the meal we're going to cook here is going to consist of one meat and four vegetables but remember in a wok you can cook any kind of food you like the secret of the chinese style of cooking is really just the very high temperatures we cook at and also having a pan built to withstand them now it really doesn't matter whether you cook on gas or cook an electric if you cook an electric though always use the smallest burner you have if you use a large burner you're going to heat up this part of the wok and really you don't want to do that all you want to do is to heat that little bit at the bottom the bit that hits the burner and the wok will take care of the rest for you now we're going to start off by stir frying a mixture of onions and peppers and the fry we're going to use a little bit of oil now the choice of oil we use in the wok is very very important because of those high cooking temperatures you need an oil which is not going to smoke at too low at temperature you need an oil without a strong flavor of its own so it won't spoil the flavor of the food we're cooking i'm using peanut oil which really is the best but if there's some reason you can't use it you can get away with corn oil cottonseed oil soybean oil or safflower oil any one of those five oils will do but just as important as the oil you can use are the ones you really shouldn't use because of those high cooking temperatures you must avoid oils with a low flash point oils which burn and smoke too easy olive oil sesame oil butter margarine and regular vegetable oil now you can use those for flavorings or seasonings to be added at the end of the cooking process but not for actual stir fry because the wok just gets too hot for them now the utensil i'm using is called a chan c-h-a-m the chinese use this for stir-fry and it does an excellent job you can call it a spatula if you like now it's a little bit different from the spatulas we're used to our spatulas tend to be square across the end the chinese one is rounded this is round because the wok is round it's designed to fit the contour of the wok and if you use it this way for holding food to the side it will hold the food but also allow any liquids we have to return to the middle now you will see as the cooking goes on that every little thing to do with the wok and its utensils have all been very carefully thought out and we don't cook the onions too much at this stage just until they start to turn transparent so for our purposes those onions are ready now we'll just pull those up the side of the wok out of the way now remember in a wok when you stir fry you only cook in the bottom we use the sides of the wok for keeping the food warm notice the way the food tries to stay to the side notice the way the liquids drain and collect in the middle now that's a very important part of what cooking and i will explain all that to you in just a few moments but what we're going to do firstly is to cook some meat in the onion juice the onion juice will serve to tenderize the meat it will break down the fiber the meat in a wok there should be no such thing as tough meat now you can cook any kind of meat any kind of fish or poultry but don't rush out and buy the most expensive cuts of meat like filet mignon you will find the cheaper cuts of meat have usually got the better flavor and that's why stingy people like what now my boss is stingy as well and that's why you don't get much meat now you may have noticed there's a big trend towards chinese cooking at this time i think the only people not following that trend are my chinese friends and they're all eating in mcdonald's and burger king so you've probably been around the stores and seen there are lots and lots of watts to choose from stainless steel locks are the prettiest but they were very very hard to heat up stainless steel is not a good conductor of heat and you have to use a lot of oil with stainless steel to stop your food and sticking machine made woks are usually too thin if you have a wok already and it's constantly burning your food it's just because it's too thin electric works well electric blocks have all got thermostats to control the heat now thermostats switch on and off all the time your heat goes up and down all the time and you do not get the precise and constant high temperature required for what cooking and while i've been talking to you i've been browning or sealing the meat and now we've done that we can safely season it now you'll find that chinese people use very little salt in their cooking they do use some but not an awful lot now whatever salt we need here we can get from our various sources this recipe calls for soy sauce and you can use anybody's soy sauce you like now i'm using kicker because i like it and it's my kitchen i can use anything i like if you feel happier with a brand name you recognize la choy chunking piling one of those will do now if we were cooking this same meal at home or if i were following the recipe like i really should be doing what we must do now is to take the onions and the meat right out of the wok remember in chinese cooking you're forever taking stuff out then putting it all back in again at the end but to keep us all from standing here too long today let's just leave the food up there warming once again notice the way the food stays to the side notice the way the liquids drain and collect in the middle a very important part of what cooking i will explain all that to you in just a few moments now i'm going to add some plain cold water now because we're going to do some steaming now this is not stomach you probably do every day it's just really to show you that in a wok not only can you stir fry but you can also steam in fact you can bake oil roast and deep fry as well now we sell a lot of woks to vegetarians they just seem to like the way those steamed vegetables turn out so we're going to steam a little bit of celery we'll put that in there first we're going to add a little bit of broccoli for variety we'll throw a few slices of carrot in just to break up the green color the food has nothing has to taste good it also has to look good now if you want to use frozen vegetables well you could certainly steam those you want to mix the vegetables together you can do that as well remember because we're steaming are not boiling or frying there'll be no mingling of flavor so no more oil no more frying you saw me put the water in the water will do the steaming for us we're going to put the lid on the top in just a moment now the lid we call a time dome because it tells us when the food is ready what we try not to do in the wok is place peekaboo cooking don't keep lifting the lid all the time and checking on progress each time you do that that's going to add to your cooking time remember the whole idea of what cooking is to get it over and done with as quickly as possible many years ago when it all started chinese people just didn't have a lot of fuel to cook with so things had to be done quickly they really didn't have a choice about it anyway it won't take very long while it's cooking let me explain a couple of important points about the techniques of what cooking and also a little bit about the rockets cooking in first of all what makes this wok so very different from the ones you've seen before well remember this is the original this is the way watts always used to be it's an authentic hand hammered wob from the people's republic of china if you've been in a chinese restaurant your meal was cooked in the wok made exactly like this one a little bit bigger but made in the same way now these woks are all made by hand are made from low carbon steel which is very like the iron we use in those old iron skillets of ours now it takes quite a while to make each one of these it starts off as a flat disc of metal which they put into a wooden mold and they simply pound it into shape with a hammer now making it this way the whole walk turns out the way it's supposed to the bottom of the wok where we cook where the intensity is concentrated down here it's purposely made three times thicker than it is up there at the top see up here we don't need any thickness of metal that's just there to keep the food warm but more importantly i'm sure you can see from where you are inside the wok the indentations the marks from the hammering have been left in there now it is those hammer marks which are helping to hold the food up to the side but still align the liquids to drain and collect in the middle and that's a very important part of what cooking if that were any smooth-sided wok your food would just slide right back down to the middle again and of course that defeats the whole purpose now all good woks come with a dome the dome converts into a steamer a dutch oven a popcorn making and a chicken fryer it also comes with a ring now we don't use the ring on electric burners barbecue grills or corning ware stoves you could die of malnutrition waiting for your wok to get hot it will never get hot enough to use properly if you use it on a gas burner be very very careful now many people tell you to do this but i they really don't understand that on modern american appliances there's a real danger of the heat getting trapped inside there i've seen many stovetops discolor really badly with the heat and you know the truth is in this country you really don't need it what is best for use for is just to steady the walk on the rough surface of a water cold fire many asian people still call this a fire ring it does of course come with a book called what cooking for beginners it tells you how to season the wok how to look after it and there are 40 recipes in there to get you started but you know the best thing about walks once you get used to them are all the different things you can do with them now here are some great ideas to try at home let's take this ring which we can't think of much else to do with at the moment and put it inside the wok well why not pour some water in there line up some ears of corn across the ring and steam the corn for 15 to 20 minutes rather than boil it now you'll find steamed corn delicious it's much better for you than oil just like steamed vegetables if anyone at home likes popcorn now that's real chinese put the kernels in the oil into the middle put the dome on the top again put on the highest heat you've got give it a good shake up one of the best and biggest popcorn makers you've used a tone do you know you can scramble eggs in there poach eggs eggs and bacon omelets and crepes cooked fish spaghetti and spaghetti sauce soup stews and casseroles barbecue time try this on your outside burn i put it right onto the hot coals or on the grill with a ring inside again instead of water this time pour a can and a half of beer in there you are allowed to do that if you're 21 and over put a slab of ribs across the ring steam the ribs in the beer for 20 minutes before you barbecue them now the beer will tenderize the meat you'll find the flavor delicious and any gravy you've got left you can just mix up with your barbecue sauce you are only limited to what you can do with the wok by the limits of your own imagination it's one of the most versatile and useful piece of the kitchen equipment you'll probably use and it's only taken 3000 years to find it now the utensils are also interesting one lady thought they looked primitive well they most certainly do but these are handmade in china and i promise you they'll never wear out but that's the chan for stir-fry that's the ladle for soup stews and rice and look at the shape of the ladle it's designed to be used in conjunction with the chan the two fit inside each other for picking things up and serving three thousand years of thought there as well the strainer is made from brass which is a cold metal it dissipates heat quickly use that when you're deep frying the oil would cling to the cool metal rather than to your hot food now that's a good idea and the bamboo brush that's a chinese brillo pad we use this for cleaning the wok and i'll show you how to do that in just a moment all weight watching organizations recommend what cooking you see in a what you just don't get all those nasty calories but you still retain all the nutrition and all the vitamin value and let's be honest in our own kitchens we really do boil our vegetables far too much it's not our fault it's the way we brought up we boil the color out of them we throw the best bits down the drain and then we go down to the drugstore and we buy pills to replace what we just threw down the drink now my vegetables are ready now they're always ready when i stop talking now in your own kitchen what you look for are wisps of steam and they will eventually come up around the whole circumference of the dome remember at this stage though they're slightly underdone because that's just the way chinese people like what i'd like you to do now though is have a look at the color of the vegetables look at the green vegetables they really have taken on a nice dark and healthy and really rich say the green the carrot there looks like it has a light behind it you can tell just by looking all the goodness all the vitamins and all the nutrition that were there at the start of not being lost now there's a good size meal in there and you know even at today's high prices and i shot retail just the same as you did that probably cost me somewhere between about 70 and 80 cents you can't even get a good cup of coffee for that price nowadays not only is it what very very quick but because of the very high vegetable content it's always very economical and we were talking before about the very the many many advantages that the hand hammered walk has over all the imitation walks on the market now there's one you can clearly see the way the wok will hold the food to the side but still allow the liquids to drain and collect in the middle but more important than the one you can see is the one you can't see and that's the ability of this wok to cook at such very high temperatures but without burning or scorching your food and remember the whole idea the whole secret to the art of chinese cooking are those high cooking temperatures they seal the flavor in the food they give you that authentic taste and only with a good heavy hand hammered iron what can you do that successfully well we're going to thicken up the gravy now with a little bit of cornstarch and water if you don't like cornstarch you can use arrowroot regular flour sweet potato flour or nothing at all if you don't want to if you want to add a little bit of wine at this stage add a little bit of wine if you want to add a lot of wine add a lot of wine when it's your walk and it's your kitchen you can just about do anything you like so there's my gravy made and that wasn't very difficult now if you can imagine coming home from work one day maybe you've been out shopping all day or perhaps you've just been out all day you arrive home tired weary and hungry your legs ate your bones ached if you've got kids with you all day you might even find your brain eggs as well the last thing you want to do is mess about with pots and pans for an hour use the wok now the wok is ideal for leftovers you don't have to be a gourmet cook to use a wok you've been watching me there's nothing very complicated about anything we've done so far this is one of the few forms of cooking i'm aware of where the skill lies in the pan and not in the cook and nobody ever knows thank goodness now remember to cook this same meal at home you'll need a skillet for the meat three pots and pans for the vegetables four burners going at 20 minutes of time that's an hour and 20 minutes of very expensive energy and just think of all the cleaning up here we got the same meal one wok one burner it's taken five or six minutes and we've only got one pot to clean if nothing else convinces you that a wok will be a useful addition to your kitchen this part certainly will look cleaning up because all you need to get that wok clean at home is hot water right out of the tap and the bamboo brush you'll find them so easy to clean just like those old iron skillets a lot of us are used to and still using at home once you season or cure this wok now that's stomach you only do once it only takes 30 minutes on top of your stove to do that when you get it home you'll find that nothing will stick to it very easily in fact while you're messing about with brillo pads detergents and scarring powder our chinese housewife is getting into the kitchen and also getting out of again as quickly as possible now if we were doing this in china proper we would finish off with an old cloth or a rag now this is not china we know very well where we are here paper towels to the rescue the quicker picker upper in the same way as those old iron skillets the more we use this wok the darker it's going to get the darker it's going to get the better it's going to cook now that dark coating is so important in cooking it's almost pure carbon it's one of the finest and one of the toughest non-stick surfaces in the world except you don't need special utensils with this one now i just added a little dab of peanut oil to make it look nice you don't have to do that part if you don't want to

Channel: Mammafong

Views: 194,281

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Id: Ff_ObKMjn4w

Length: 14min 34sec (874 seconds)

Published: Fri Sep 18 2020