Hang it from your ceiling like they do in movies and tv shows.
maybe i would, but my partner wouldn’t
Damn that looks good. Korean pork shoulder at Lardo near GOAT sandwich
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You can bang out great stir fry dishes at home with a flat-bottom wok and an electric stove. Maybe it won’t quite be professional Chinese restaurant-grade, but w/e.
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Throw in a blow torch and you gucci.
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This is actually a great technique, you can get a little wok smokiness going this way even if your set up in less than ideal.
Kenjis has a whole segment of it in new book. He basically says you can get 80%+ if the wok hei flavor from and electric stove and a blow torch.
Anyone ever used a Searzall? Game changer.
I have an induction wok. It’s fine. I’m not sure it’s really possible to get the sides as hot as you would with a real wok burner. But I haven’t actually tested it. Wife does all the wok cooking and it is more or less indistinguishable from when we had a pretty high end gas stove a few years ago.
Probably wrong thread but —
Holy shit. The cost of eating out is just ridiculous for the quality of food we’ve been getting. Generally speaking, if my family of 3 (two adults, one 9 year old) goes out to eat, it’s a minimum of $60 and more likely closer to $100 for just a run of the mill meal.
Higher end places are $100+ for just my wife and I for lunch now.
WTF? We’ve been so disappointed in the value ratio that we’ve pretty much stopped going out to eat, and when we do it’s almost always to tiny ethnic joints like pho joints.
Is everybody else experiencing this as well or is it limited to my town or the Pac NW?
I think a large contributing factor to what I’m observing in restaurants is based on supply chain issues (cost) plus skimpflation. All products (ingredients, tools, plateware/silverware, takeout boxes) cost more now, and while that cost is being exerted downwards onto the consumer, restaurants are also opting for inferior products to keep prices under control.
- A good burger cost $17 in 2020
- The same burger costs $21 in 2022
- An inferior burger costs $19 in 2022
Restaurants are, much of the time, choosing option #3. Extrapolate this across the entire menu, the wine list, the physical overhead, and the other tools required to produce a restaurant experience.
In the last 6 months, I read an article that stated some eye-popping percentage of restaurant workers had left the industry during COVID and (permanently) gone to work in cannabis. Cultivating/picking herb, processing, retail, whatever. Those people are gone, and the vast majority of them aren’t coming back. I’ll try to find the article.
Anecdotally, I think the quality of worker in restaurants has also decreased over the last couple years. Covid helped a lot of chefs and cooks realize that there are TONS of opportunities in food beyond the classic ‘chef-driven restaurant experience’. Hotels, catering, private/crowd-sourced chef services, and big/chainy restaurants all pay pretty well, and provide a much higher quality of life. In my aging restaurant industry circle, so many amazingly talented leaders have gone on to these types of roles as a means to calibrate their lives outside of work. I think this is worth something in the, “why are restaurants kinda shitty now?” conversation.
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Meanwhile, the “essential” labor of restaurant workers did not translate into higher pay or better working conditions; in fact, given customer anger, conditions had grown worse. Now, as restaurants fill with customers again, many service workers have decided to move on. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, nearly 4.3 million Americans quit their jobs in August, with quits in accommodations and food services increasing. In August, 892,000 of these workers voluntarily walked off the job, nearly 7 percent of the total workforce in just one month. It’s the largest figure of any industry.
Where are they headed next? Many have settled on a different industry entirely: cannabis.
Thanks for the explanations. I forgot to include that in addition to costs going up and quality going down, service has been pretty abysmal lately too.
Feel bad for the restaurant owners, but also shitty customers get some of the blame too.
This is why many FOH service staff have decided “fuck it, I’ll pick/deliver groceries for InstaCart” (or something else w low barrier to entry)
If they have stuck around in restaurants, it’s easy to develop that DGAF attitude. I would too. People are the worst.
Still loving Kenji’s wok book, definite must-have. Recipes themselves are pretty much like you see in other cookbooks, but the explanation of technique and occasional science nerdery is great. I took a swing at his Thai crab fried rice and beef w/ broccoli, thought they were quite tasty.
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When did you start eating beef?
Maybe I had you confused with someone else.
I wasn’t sure what to do for dinner tonight, and then
O hai thar, best salmon in the world
Smoked briefly on the Weber to 120 F. Side of asparagus and sugar snap peas fresh from the farmers market, blanched and served with a mint yogurt dressing.
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Haha yeah about a year ago I mostly totally gave up red meat, this is like the third time I’ve had red meat this year. I try to vegetarian a few days a week.
Gotta get my poast in right before Wookie, he’s a tough act to follow!
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