Kristof Jozsa
TVWBB Fan
After eating out a few times recently and trying some chinese and thai food, I thought it would worth a try making such myself. I have read up on the subject and picked up a 12" carbon steel wok, round bottomed. As I have an induction cooktop in my kitchen, I thought the grill would make a sufficient heat source for the wok, especially paired with a home made vortex. (as I sidenote, it costs $55 to ship a single real Vortex to Europe - I had to skip this deal). I had some worries about placing the wok right on top of the vortex, basically closing down air at the top, but thought it's still worth a try.
First time trying out my setup last week was an astounding success. A chimney of cheap Tesco briqs filled my vortex just fine and heated the wok to a point where peanut oil was smoking heavily just in a few seconds and every food placed in the wok sizzled like crazy constantly. I had to remove the wok from time to time to keep temperature down a bit and whenever I did so, flames appeared instantly on top of the vortex:
I tried to cook something really simple that time and the photo might not show it but the results were really really amazing:
Today I started cooking peanut chicken with much greater confidence, and failed miserably. No matter how I tried, I couldn't heat up my wok on the vortex properly this time. First I kicked off with a chimney of lump, thinking that lump burns at higher temps than briqs. After pouring it into the vortex, the fire went quite pale, not really omitting too much heat. After giving up this way, I started over with a full chimney of lit Weber briquettes (I had ran out of the Tesco ones used last time) but these didn't bring too much of a fire inside the vortex either. There were no flames above the vortex and the wok only sizzled in the moment I placed the food in. The food was okay at the end, but really wasn't any better than one did in a pan in the kitchen and was nowhere compared to last time's one.
The single explanation I have is that one type of briqs burn much much hotter than the other or the lump I tried - almost everything else was did the same way as previously. My question is, apart of using the hottest burning fuel I can get, what else could I do to keep my temps up in a vortex for cooking in a wok? Or maybe a more cone-like vortex shape would help focusing heat? Maybe I really shouldn't place the wok right on top of the vortex, closing the air gap? Any other tricks or hints I could use? Thanks!
First time trying out my setup last week was an astounding success. A chimney of cheap Tesco briqs filled my vortex just fine and heated the wok to a point where peanut oil was smoking heavily just in a few seconds and every food placed in the wok sizzled like crazy constantly. I had to remove the wok from time to time to keep temperature down a bit and whenever I did so, flames appeared instantly on top of the vortex:
I tried to cook something really simple that time and the photo might not show it but the results were really really amazing:
Today I started cooking peanut chicken with much greater confidence, and failed miserably. No matter how I tried, I couldn't heat up my wok on the vortex properly this time. First I kicked off with a chimney of lump, thinking that lump burns at higher temps than briqs. After pouring it into the vortex, the fire went quite pale, not really omitting too much heat. After giving up this way, I started over with a full chimney of lit Weber briquettes (I had ran out of the Tesco ones used last time) but these didn't bring too much of a fire inside the vortex either. There were no flames above the vortex and the wok only sizzled in the moment I placed the food in. The food was okay at the end, but really wasn't any better than one did in a pan in the kitchen and was nowhere compared to last time's one.
The single explanation I have is that one type of briqs burn much much hotter than the other or the lump I tried - almost everything else was did the same way as previously. My question is, apart of using the hottest burning fuel I can get, what else could I do to keep my temps up in a vortex for cooking in a wok? Or maybe a more cone-like vortex shape would help focusing heat? Maybe I really shouldn't place the wok right on top of the vortex, closing the air gap? Any other tricks or hints I could use? Thanks!
