Episode: 1787
Title: HPR1787: A Beginner with a Wok
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1787/hpr1787.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 09:17:29

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This in HPR episode 1,787 entitled The Beginner With A Walk, it is hosted by Frank Bell and
in about 17 minutes long, the summer is, Frank Bell shares some of the things he learned
about cooking with a walk.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by An Honesthost.com, get 15% discount on all shared
hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15, better web hosting that's honest and
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Hello, this is Frank Bell, today I want to talk about something which has very little
to do with computers but can be rather geeky and that's cooking.
I've recently purchased a walk, I did it completely on impulse, I don't remember exactly
what it costs, I think about $26 and I've been having fun learning how to use it.
So today I'm going to talk about some of the things I've learned about making stir-fried
dishes.
Before I get started though, I just want to recognize and express my appreciation to John
Colp for the tremendous effort he has put forth in the past few weeks to make sure that
HPR has had shows and that this great effort stays alive.
Back to my topic, as I said I'm not an expert in using a walk by any means but I've gotten
good enough so that I'm starting to add lib my own recipes.
If you're looking for an expert, look somewhere else.
But as I'm still learning the basics, I think I'm in a pretty good position to explain
the basics to anyone who might be interested in giving walk cooking a world.
This walk I got arrived with very elaborate instructions about how to season it.
It involved heating the walk to very hot, coating it with oil, wiping the oil off and
repeating until nothing would stick to the walk.
The instructions actually said it might take as many as ten iterations of the procedure
before it was successful, but actually in my case it only took three.
And at that point the device was as thoroughly seasoned as I am mother's cast iron frying
pans which are easily 70 or 80 years old and nothing sticks to them either.
If the frying pan or the walk is properly seasoned, once you're done using it, you can clean
it simply by rinsing it, maybe occasionally letting it soak for a few minutes and then
just wiping it clean with a sponge or a paper towel.
You do not want to use dish detergent on them or any kind of soap because that will take
off the seasoning and then you'll have to season it all over again or it will not cook properly.
Now onto what I've discovered about using the darn thing.
The first thing I learned was that cooking with a walk is surprisingly easy, much easier
than, say for example, making a souffle and hundreds of times easier than making holiday
sauce from scratch with a whisk the old fashioned way.
Do that once and it will convince you to use the blender way forever more.
I've cooked surface shrimp with vegetables, checking with vegetables, various vegetarian
dishes, not because I'm a vegetarian by any means, but because vegetarian dishes prepared
in a stir fry manner and served that were rice with some nice soy sauce or other sauce
are actually quite tasty and can be very filling.
What I found are suitable for walk cookery in terms of vegetables are pretty much any
vegetable that you could saute up in a frying pan or roast on a grill and have them turn
out well.
Items such as snow peas, mushrooms, scallions, onions, peppers, asparagus, even celery.
Anything you can saute in a frying pan and have it turn out tasty can work very nicely
in a walk.
I haven't made some recipes with say peas.
I have used some frozen vegetables from time to time such as peas or once I think I did
something with lime of beans and I wouldn't recommend lime of beans that you don't work
quite nicely unless you get the real small tender lime of beans but I still prefer them.
Well the traditional way was just a little bit of beef bullion and the mixture to give them
a little added flavor.
Otherwise I generally don't like canned vegetables at all, especially canned green vegetables
such as peas and green beans.
There's something in the canning process that gives them a flavor that I find rather
distasteful and unpleasant.
You can also use nuts.
You can use pinules or pine nuts in some dishes and have them work quite nicely and sometimes
particularly in chicken dishes, even some peanuts.
And of course, spices and ideally fresh garlic, though you can get away with garlic powder
or minced garlic, you know dried minced garlic in a pinch.
As a look for describing what I've learned about how to do wok cookery, I'm going to
use the recipe that actually I prepared last night which was stir fried chicken with mushrooms,
asparagus, scallions and garlic.
And as I go through this, I will point out what I've found as a more or less general
principles of wok cookery.
The reason I picked asparagus for this particular recipe is because in this time of year in my
part of the world is when you can get good, fresh asparagus, and I stumbled over a nice
big batch of fresh asparagus at my local supermarket the last time I went shopping.
I find there are four basic steps to wok cookery, at least what I've been doing.
You need to prep your ingredients including your spices and have everything ready to
go before you start cooking.
Then you want to properly preheat the wok before you actually start cooking with it and
have it already.
Then of course you cook the dish and the final step of course is to eat what you've just
cooked.
The prep is one of the most important steps because once you start cooking stuff moves
pretty fast.
Whatever you need to cook needs to be sliced or diced into small pieces, not infinitesimal
pieces.
And of course when you diced the chicken you don't have to put the little black dots
on it, just cut it up.
Before you start cooking and including having your spices and any sauces you're going
to use in the cooking process ready to go.
If for example you're cooking shrimp you want to have the shrimp peeled and devained
and waiting before you start to cook them.
This chicken I cooked last night I cut up into pieces of about half an inch square give
or take.
They don't have to be all consistently the same size.
This is not an exercise in precision, you just want to have them cut up so that all
the pieces will cook at approximately the same speed.
I like to marinate the chicken before I cook it so I actually cut it up about three or
four hours in advance and put it in a dish and poured some teriyaki sauce, some commercial
teriyaki sauce from the grocery store over it, mixed it up real good and let it sit
in there and soak in until I was ready to start.
You can find really neat marinades in the Asian section of your local grocery store if
it has such a section I would encourage you to try different ones.
So far I've tried three different types of sauces that were all marketed as teriyaki
sauce but each one was a little different from the others.
And of course if you can't find something that dry cherry makes for a very nice marinade
for whatever you might be willing to do and unlike marinating something in red wine
or white wine, once you open the cherry bottle you don't have to worry that the cherry
is going to go bad in a week.
We don't drink much wine in this house and that would be a worry if I tried to use
wine but using a nice dry cherry the cherry bottle might last me six months or so.
So once I was ready to start cooking I sliced up the vegetables I was going to use and
I sorted them by the order in which they were going to go into the wok.
Different items cook at different speeds or take longer cooking times would probably
be a more accurate way to express it.
So I put the chopped scallions and I could have used Vidalia onions or white onions or
any other kind of onions but the scallions are good this time of year.
The scallions and five peeled garlic pieces I didn't this today I didn't miss them sometimes
I would have missed them or sliced them but I just wanted to use the whole ones last night
in one little dish because they were going to go in first.
Now the asparagus takes a relatively long time to cook compared to the mushrooms so I sliced
up the asparagus in pieces of about three quarters of an inch to an inch long and put them
in another dish and finally I sliced up the mushrooms and put them and yet another dish.
So everything there was ready then I got down the spices I was going to use I got some
mild Hungarian paprika sauce which we had purchased by mail from a place called Atos
European Deli in Los Angeles Atos by the way is a pleasure to deal with on the telephone.
If you want to cook with paprika and have it come out right use Hungarian paprika.
There is no resemblance to the spanish stuff that we find in the spice rack of your typical
American supermarket and I used I think a little basil some pepper and that was about it and
then I preheated the wok and got it nice and hot.
Now you don't want it burning hot.
The instructions at the couple of tutorials that I read said the ideal heat is at a level
where if you flick some drops of water into it from your fingers the water beads up and
sizzles away almost immediately and on my particular stove that seemed to happen when
I had the burner this stove happens to be an electric stove when I had the burner set
at medium.
If I got the wok nice and hot I did the water test when it was satisfactory I put in
about a tablespoon of oil now you need to choose your oil carefully.
I used canola oil which you call canola oil because it comes from rape seeds so I think
the canola is PR name much is the dolphin fish got renamed Mahi Mahi if I remember correctly
because people didn't realize they were eating fish they thought they were eating flipper.
I also like to use grape as in concrete grape seed oil that's good for high heat cooking
so it's peanut oil.
Olive oil is not particularly good for high heat cooking it separates at lower temperature
and gets smokes at too lower temperature so I threw in my oil and I put in the spices
no I never measure them I put in the spices and just mixed them up real quick with my wooden
spoon and then dumped in the chicken and I cooked the chicken until it was thoroughly cooked
through which was approximately four minutes and as soon as it was done I dumped the chicken
into a casserole dish and ran it into the oven at a low heat about 200 degrees Fahrenheit
which is about 93 C if I did my arithmetic correctly and properly remembered my seventh
grade math to keep warm then I had to add some more oil because the chicken had kind of used
up so and some more spices so I did that real quick and then I chunked in the scallions and the
garlic and I stirred them frequently and you should also stir the chicken frequently now here's a
footnote when you look up a definition of stir fry it will often say that stir fry is a method of
cooking that involves stirring continuously no it doesn't it involves stirring very very frequently
but you can take a moment say to turn out turn away and rinse out addition the sink if it's
addition not using anymore and then turn back and stir you don't have to stand there like the
agitator on a mix mastering keeps stirring every single second at so many revolutions you can take
a break for 10 or 20 seconds so as soon as that was ready I threw in the asparagus now the asparagus
I've learned from experience takes a little longer to cook I gave it about four minutes
and kept stirring and stirring and finally grab one and tasted it when it seemed to be not done
all the way through because there's more cooking time coming but done enough to go to the next step
then I chunked in the mushrooms and still stirring very frequently cook them for about three minutes
and when I when they were about ready I took the chicken out of the oven dump the chicken back in
and stir everything around until it was all properly heated through and ready to serve at which
point I put it into a casserole dish put a lid on it took the rice off the stove and in our case
we usually brown rice brown rice takes about 45 minutes to cook maybe sometimes an hour so I
had started the rice before I actually started cooking the on tray and it ended was all done right
about the time the main course was ready so they both at the table at the same time and we chowed
done so just to recap cooking with the wok is easy also as I have used skillets for years and
years and years to cook all kinds of stuff I disagree with those folks who say that you can use
a skillet yes you can use a skillet you will not get the same results so if you want to try this
I'd recommend you know spend the 25 bucks or so they would cost to get one that's good enough
for home use and learn with the right tools you need to plan what you're going to cook
and prep the ingredients because once you start cooking stuff moves too fast for you to do your
add living there and the add living you're going to do needs to be done in the planning stage I know
that sounds contradictory but some contradiction is part of life and then yes you add the ingredients
to cook them you cook them quickly you cook them thoroughly starting with the items that take the
longest to cook and adding items in order to the ones that take the shortest amount of time to cook
I would encourage anyone if you if you like to cook and you haven't tried cooking with the wok
give it a shot it's a lot more fun than I expected it to be in the show notes I have a link to
a couple of tutorials on the inner webs that I find particularly useful and also to a couple of
recipes so and until next time thank you for listening
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