Master the Art of Stir Frying with Three Different Woks

Uh, my I literally just like had a blank like pause in my head. I've no idea what I Like I'm here, but I'm not really here. Welcome back to the channel. We are on lesson five of stir-frying, mastering the art of stir-frying. I'm going to use three different woks to do this. We've got the flat-bottom carbon steel wok on your induction hob here. Then I've got a cast iron wok also on the induction, and I've got my round-bottom wok on the gas stove. And I'll show you the three

different types of noodles uh that I've soaked in the preparation lesson, lesson one. So, I've got my egg noodles, which I'll do a quick chow mein for. Vermicelli, which I'll use the spicy doubanjiang sauce, and I'll cook that in this cast iron wok. And then I've got my pad Thai noodles still soaking in cold water from lesson one, which I'm going to piece together with a classic more classic Chinese sweet and sour sauce. The ingredients don't really matter. You've seen or you can go back to how we prepared all these ingredients uh in the other lessons.

First off though is getting your wok um to a high temperature um so that it the oil is nice and smoking hot. So, if you've seen lesson four, you would have seen that you want to prime your wok with a good amount of oil to get it to a smoking point. I'm going to pour that back out, and this is the traditional method of stir-frying um and getting your wok to its optimum temperature and the oil to the right place so that nothing sticks in the bottom of that wok. Once your wok starts to smoke, you just want to swirl that oil around. And then, make sure that oil comes to a smoking point itself before you then pour that oil out. And then, I'm going to start my stir fry. I've got this pre-seasoned, very simply salt,

sugar, a bit of sesame oil. All these pieces of chicken have been tenderized to varying degrees. Um and you'll see that in lesson two as to how I did that. My oil is smoking hot now, so I'm going to pour that oil out, leaving a little bit in the base of the wok, ready to stir fry. And now, we're going to start with a little bit of spring onion, why not? I'm just kind of mix and matching ingredients here. I'll keep this stir fried uh chow mein, uh let's say, uh very, very simple with some greens, uh a few bean sprouts. And at this point, I'm not really worrying about the wok loading up smoke and heat because I know that I can maneuver it absolutely when I need to before it goes back down on the heat.

Again, lesson four, maneuvering your heat. Um you don't want to overload your wok with noodles. There's not much there anyway, so I'm going to put my noodles in. And this chicken is already cooked. Um it's already been stir fried, so a small amount of chicken in there um before you then start to come in the head. Another way to maneuver your heat round, and then give it a quick flip. Now, when you are starting to load your wok up with a lot of ingredients, where it's kind of more than half full, that's when your wok will want to like it will lose heat.

It will want to cool down very, very quickly. So, my advice at this point is don't toss the wok too much, you know? Like, um you want it to build up more heat, and you want the ingredients to jump out want to jump out of the wok, otherwise they will stick to the bottom. I haven't used a lot of oil in the wok. I poured most of it out. Before you pour the sauce in, and this is This sauce is done in the layering flavor section uh or lesson. This is just some oyster sauce, rice wine, uh a little bit light soy sauce, and some sesame oil. Your wok needs to be smoking hot, almost about to burn the food before the sauce goes in. Why? Because you want that sauce to kind of punch into the noodles. And then, once it's vigorously boiling

underneath, then go for the fold or the tummy in the head. And then, make sure you're on that heat, constantly looking for that sizzle. I'm just going to put a pinch of salt into that. I'm going to use a little bit of dark soy to color those noodles. And you'll see when I then do the next tummy in the head that it will really like spread that color will spread through the noodles. High heat all the way. Just make sure you fold that through like so. And then, those noodles after a few minutes of folding through are done.

Next stir-fry, I'm going to make a kind of like a makeshift spicy vermicelli. You know, the recipe doesn't isn't really of importance here. It's more um the sort of wok hei and being able to maneuver your heat with this heavy base cast iron wok. Um now, you'll notice I'm cooking this on induction. But the wok has a flat base, but inside on these cast iron woks, which you can buy on the school of wok website, they're round inside. So, you can circulate heat however you wish uh in the more traditional way. Um I'm going up to a high sort of medium to high heat to start um and we'll bring that wok up to temperature. Whilst meanwhile, I will quickly set up a wok clock of ingredients. So, to keep myself really nice and prepared all the way through.

Again, I'm using my sort of buffet of ingredients here. Um so, I've got some uh spring onion white parts cuz I've got it. Um I'm going to use some of this um ginger and garlic. I've got the matchsticks of ginger here and the very roughly um chopped garlic. Um because those spices will go really well with this uh chili bean mix here. This chili bean sauce, rice wine, um a little bit light soy, some sugar, and a tiny amount of rice vinegar uh for a nice balanced spicy flavor. So, if you want, of course, you can put some protein in there as well. So, I've got some of this pre-fried pre-tenderized chicken. Because that's pre-fried, that can go pretty much last. Uh I've got some uh choi sum here. Uh the heart

vegetable that's been nicely prepped. You don't need a lot for a stir-fry, you know, especially with the noodles in there. Um and some bean sprouts to go with that. You can see then my wok clock is very easily set up. I'm using this wok clock in this not just for teaching you guys and showing you guys, but with a heavy based wok like this, it will collect and retain a lot of heat for a long period of time, okay? So, uh I when you stir fry in a heavy based wok, you'll have very little time to maneuver things around, and so the more organized you are, the better. A good handful of the vermicelli is plenty, and you can see my wok is smoking hot now. And we're ready to go. So, I am ready, I'm organized, I have

a little um tea towel here ready to uh stir fry. And because this is a heavy based wok, I'm just going to put enough oil to cook my first ingredient in this wok, and swirl it around with the base of my spoon. Unless you've got like massive forearms like true wok chefs, which I don't, then you're going to struggle to keep pouring like moving this wok around to like maneuver your heat. So, you're going to get that from the 10:00 to 2:00 movement, but again, even that won't cool it down as much as being able to flick it with a one handled wok like this one here. Smoking hot, first ingredient goes in. My spring onion, and you can see you'll see with this, it really does retain

heat, and it's very hot. I will start to bring that heat up as I go cuz I want to kind of build heat even more as I'm stir frying because I am stir-frying in this heavy-based wok. I'm not making a casserole here. So, um the idea is that like if you understand your heat and how to maneuver that around, um as I'm adding ingredients, that wok will want to cool down. I'm on eight out of nine here on the induction, and my base aromatics have already browned within seconds. And that retained heat is something that you'll get used to, but you have to move quickly, which is why the organization with this stir-fry is so important. The wok clock, get yourself organized. 12:00

with your first ingredient, and then each ingredient will follow, cuz you can hear, even on this induction, how hot this wok is getting. Push to the back, allow space for your next ingredient. My next ingredient is going to be actually my noodles before my chicken comes in, but I do need a little drizzle of oil, because I can see that the base of the wok is quite matte, quite bare, like lacking in grease. It needs a little bit of grease now before my noodles come in. I'm going to go up to the highest heat, nine out of nine. Wait for the oil. It is smoking hot because of the retained heat from the wok. noodles have gone in. My chicken can go on top. And then, you can't do the tummy in the head because it's so heavy, or

you can a little bit, but a little bit of a fold round, or if you have a wok spatula, then the spatula will help you get underneath the noodles to then do the turn and the fold, or a turn and a fold, and you can see that I'm maneuvering heat around this wok in a way that is very, very different to using a single handled carbon steel wok. Now, at this point, I want the wok to come to really good smoking point before I pour any of that sauce in. I may not use all this sauce. You need as much sauce as you have ingredients in there. I might use sort of half to two-thirds of it. You can see the smoke kind of building up here. At that point, the sauce goes in. And you can hear it hitting the bottom

of the wok. Let it do its thing for five four or five seconds before you do the next fold through. And the beauty of a retained heat from a cast iron wok like this is that it will just keep cooking this stuff. And that is a really lovely way to cook. And if you feel like there's any sticking at the bottom at all, go for that really like grating noise and scrape it off. But also, what you can do is take a little bit of liquid or water, just to splash into that and get all the flavor off the bottom of that wok and into the noodles. That there is a lesson in mastering the art of stir frying, no matter what equipment you're using. With your last stir fry, I'm on the round bottom carbon steel thin metal wok and on a gas hob. So, you're getting that

enveloping heat um that yeah, you'll know if you've used gas before. And yeah, if you go back to lesson four, the maneuvering heat, I kind of show you with a very simple your first what should be always your first ever stir fry, an egg fried rice on this. Now, I've got here my pad thai noodles, my rice noodles that are quite They're flat, but thicker than your egg noodles or your vermicelli. Uh they've just been soaked in cold water in the preparation lesson one section of this course. Um I've got a rough what clock of ingredients. So, I've got some um I'm going to use some red onion here uh and the rest of my spring onion. The sliced red onion is good. And then I will use a little bit of garlic and a finely

chopped garlic and ginger, mainly because I've got some already in the chicken here. The chicken, this chicken, has been pre-marinated uh in uh some ginger, garlic, shaoxing rice wine, and some oyster sauce. You can see in layering flavor lesson three all the very simple uh marinades that you can do to get ex- added flavor into your stir fries. With pre-marinated, but not um uh tenderized uh chicken thigh, I'd sort of recommend, if you want to get the best out of your um stir fry, to um pre-fry the chicken first before you then finish off the stir fry and get into the rest. You can see how smoking hot that is uh and uh how quickly you can kind of maneuver that around. And of course, on the gas hob, you're

going to get more flavor with that meat or the fat and the liquid that's coming off that marinade. If at any point in your stir fry, uh you get sticking that you don't want, then it I don't I'd recommend, if you want to really perfect your stir fry, to have a bowl of water nearby so you can kind of wash um your wok in between um the cooking process. And it's mainly for this because the marinade's got that ginger and garlic in there. I'm going to put these pre-cooked chicken with my last ingredient, my bean sprouts, like so. And you see that sticking there, I don't mind that cuz I can just use this water to very quickly clean my wok out. And this is how you do it in restaurants and takeaways. There's constant running water in a tap nearby

so that they can clean their woks to clean their wok in between. And then carry on with the stir fry the next part of the stir fry or the next stir fry. Right, that wok is relatively clean. Take a little bit more oil. Swirl that around the wok. And now as you've seen a lot of our recipes when we take this through, especially on a high heat when you're like learning how to get the best out of your stir fries, there's four ways of cooling your wok down. Stirring, pushing and folding number two, a wok toss which is a long push with a quick flick back. And then number four, a tummy and a head round around with a spoon back and forth

with your wok. We'll see those actions as I go. Base flavors, onion and spring onion going in first. With heat right this, they literally will take 10 seconds to kind of flavor the oil and then your veg can go in. So I've got some choy sum there. Give it a quick flick through. And that will wilt down very, very quickly. So my pad thai noodles which are still quite rigid, they will start to take in the sauce and the liquid very quickly. And that's what we'll do. So we'll stir fry the noodles by a tummy and a head there. Flick that around. and then as the sauce comes in, they will start to soften.

Chicken, bean sprouts in with a little bit of water from the sprouts. And that water instantly is starting to cook the pad thai noodles through. I'm going to add a little bit more garlic and ginger to this. Follow that stir fry around and you can see the constant movement whether it's vertically maneuvering that heat vertically through the wok toss or full stir in horizontally maneuvering that heat. And I'm going to take about half this sweet and sour sauce and drizzle that in over the noodles as it's on this really high heat. Much like the other stir fries allowing the sauce to hit the bottom of the wok before I start to maneuver that heat again.

Back down on the heat. Now the sauce is in there, it's going to start to bubble up and wants to caramelize around the noodles. I want to cook them through until the noodles start to want to stick to the bottom of this wok. As soon as one or two strands of noodles start to stick on that wok that it's time for them to come out. And even with a sweet and sour or sticky sauce you barely get much sticking at all in the wok if you know how to master your stir fry. So you got the different stir fried noodles here. And you know, the whole point of these course this course was to sort of take you through the

the various sort of steps of how to perfect your stir fries. I actually think like dealing with noodles in a home environment, you know, it can be complicated but at the same time you follow those techniques, you know, you'll be able to get brilliant noodle dishes out very easily. What I love about when you do get those techniques right is that not only do you can you get the flavors right from following the recipes but with the techniques and that combined effort between the flavor, the ingredients and mastering these techniques will give you a brilliant start to your stir frying journey. Stir fry masterclass.

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