You can't have it both ways - either you heat up the whole cast iron pan so
that it remains hot after adding the food (and hence no gradient) or you
start cooking before the whole pan heats up (so you don't have a large a
reservoir of heat).

As long as quick temp changes are not an issue, or you plan to strengthen
your forearms by lifting the pan off the burner, you could heat up the whole
pan over a burner with low output. But you wouldn't have the gradient.

And, the word "stir-frying" is English. I suspect that the Chinese term
(chow, maybe, in Cantonese) describes the way you move the food around,
either with a cooking shovel or by flipping it. It's not really very
different from sauté, which I believe means "jump".

You should have seen the episode in which Iron Chef Chen flipped the entire
wok contents in the air and caught them after one rotation.

--
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Louis Cohen
Living la vida loca at N37° 43' 7.9" W122° 8' 42.8"


"Peter Aitken" > wrote in message
om...
> "Louis Cohen" > wrote in message
> ...
>> This has got to be one of the craziest ideas I have seen in a while.
>> Cast
>> iron pots and pans are great for dishes in which you want to keep the
>> temperature constant for a long time, either because you are adding cold
>> food to deep fry in hot oil or keeping a stew/braise going evenly over a
> low
>> flame.
>
> You are missing the point. What you say is true, but many people do not
> have
> a stove with the heat output that is required to use a traditional thin
> steel wok properly. Add the ingredients and the wok cools down so you end
> up
> with a stir-simmer and not a stir-fry. Because a cast iron wok holds the
> heat it lets you stir fry properly even if you have a wimpy heat source.
> You
> have ot adjust your cooking technique to take into account the fact that a
> cast iron wok will not cool quickly when taken off the heat, but that is
> easily done.
>>
>> But woks are light and thin, so that you can adjust the heat from hot hot
>> hot stir frying to a simmer. And, you can move cooked pieces from the
>> bottom center to the side so that they don't overcook while the rest
>> finishes. On cast iron, teh temp would be the same throughout.
>>
>
> Not so. Cast iron is a very poor conductor of heat so you will have a good
> heat gradient.
>
>> And, of course, even Iron Chef Chen would have trouble flipping food in a
>> cast iron work.
>>
>
> It's a STIR fry, not a FLIP fry!!
>
>
> --
> Peter Aitken
>
> Remove the crap from my email address before using.
>
>
>
>
> --
> Peter Aitken
>
> Remove the crap from my email address before using.
>
>