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RSS FeedHere’s how the cool toys really work. This is a demo clip from Day 1 in K1 when we cover Chinese cuisine. The students arrive at 7:00 AM armed with their knife kits, a course guide and recipe manual. I usually meet with the incoming students the week before and give them instructions on how to properly analyze the recipes and log onto my class video channel to view videos like this one. Keep in mind that 4 hours after the beginning of class they must be ready to serve 50-70 a la carte meals to waiting customers lined up at the kitchen door; it’s hectic, stressful, and more often than not they crash and burn. Hind sight is a great teacher – they produce the same menu the next day, usually with success built out of the mistakes of Day 1.
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Welcome to Ruhlman.com where I write about food, cooking, recipes and technique, because the world is better when we cook for ourselves. Thanks for visiting — hope you’ll join the conversation.
It’s great to watch practical cooking activity…. Thanks !!!
Glad you hijacked Ruhlman’s site for the week. I just inherited several ducks from a hunting friend and I found some videos on your site that helped me utilize every piece. It is nice because the guy who killed them showed me how to clean them which to him simply meant removing the breasts (without the fat!) , then he threw the rest of the bird away I was like hold up, I want the necks, feet, and everything. He didn’t know what to think. He actually called me a hillbilly.
I knew your wok range would be fast, but the speed with which it brought that oil up to temperature was amazing to see. Thank you, Chef.
If you don’t have a jet engine of a wok burner in you kitchen, you may want to consider something like this
http://www.amazon.com/Mr-Bar-B-Q-06106p-Cast-Iron-Wok/dp/B0001QIUGO/ref=cm_cr-mr-title
If you buy that one, make sure to re-season it though. Run it through a self-cleaning cycle in the oven to burn off the crappy factory seasoning.
I’m interested to know why the garlic and ginger can go in right at the beginning, into that crazy hot furnace of a wok (very impressive) and not get burned. I’m used to western recipes where I’d be sauteing the onions for a while, then adding chopped peppers (or whatever) and then the garlic would go in at the end for a minute or so, with recipes specifically saying “don’t cook the garlic for too long” or “make sure the garlic doesn’t burn”. So how does this approach work so differently, and so well?
Very impressed with the videos, many thanks for this.
Sam
Great post, chef, thanks!
Sam,
The GGS (Gonger.garlic.scallion trinity that most stir fries are based on) goes into the wok first to infuse the oil. An experianced cook will know to stir quickly and then add the next item to the wok, cooling the mixture slightly and keeping things from burning. It may be difficult to hear all of the audio above the kitchen background noise, but I begin the video by instructing my students to add the ginger and garlic to the oil BEFORE turning on the wok – heating it gently. This technique allows a novice to stir fry while avoiding the obvious pitfalls that you point out
For some reason, I can get any of the news guys pics to come up!!?
Great video. Very informative and the chef is a good speaker though (and this is just me) he “sounds” kind of aggressive!
Sounds really good!
This was a wonderful demonstration – thank you Chef Pardus!
Now, can we get the recipe for preparing the chicken to turn it into “Tangerine” Chicken?
[I have a feeling the answer is going to be, "Come apply to the CIA and you'll find out!"
]
Bradley – If eating well, sustainably and without waste makes one a HillBilly…Well, then, let’s all set back on the porch, take a long pull on the jug and shout “YeeeeyHawwww!”
Sygyzy – Hundreds of CIA students past and present are rolling on the floor, laughing right now. No, it’s not just you.
Great post chef and thanks Michael for putting these posts on here. I actually had Chef Pardus for Asian as well and the wok cooking was one of my favorite techniques I learned at school.
Any chance you can have other CIA chefs hijack your site and put their classes in here as well? I would really like to see the whole pig roasted in the Mediterranean kitchen right around the corner from K1.
Watching this video made me feel like I was back in campus in K1.
Thanks to both of you. This was refreshing!
Fantastic video – thank you chef!
Chef when is your site coming on board with all the other blogs? Sign me up for the online cooking courses….LOL with sarcasm cause I really would sign up…
This looks to be the recipe from the CIA site. I did not notice the addition of dried tangerine (an ingredient I don’t know) with the aromatics. I note that the recipe doesn’t have the julienned broccoli stalk (a nice idea).
Thanks for the video, chef. It looks good, very clear and lots of concisely delivered important information.
Ginger, garlic and scallions or shallots in Asian dishes are one of the great food marriages of all time. Soy Sauce, Dark Sesame Oil, Red, Black or Rice Wine Vinegar, Fish Sauce and Chiles augment this.
Great food marriages of all time is a good topic if MR wishes to post about it.
Liver and Onions, Basil and Tomato, Red Beans and Rice, Potato Salad and Chitlins… the possibilities are endless on this forum.
Love it. I now have wok envy.
Chef Pardus…I’m wondering if you have a recipe for 3 Cup Tofu/Chicken. I’ve seen various methods of preparation from many different chefs and it has become one of my favorite dishes. I’ve never had the opportunity to ask someone with your Asian cooking pedigree, so any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks again and love the videos!
LOVE IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!…… BRAVO CHEF!. This is great food and I love it. I am jealous about the woking action and the heat. In my present kitchen it would be as close as you have shown but very very arthritic….I am afraid.
I have to make it about the sauces and the combinations of veggies. But one thing I am still wishing you share is… what kind of oil are you using??
Not that I need it, for I don’t have such a kitchen.. but for the sake of understanding real asian cuisine.
Your read on oil temps was spot on. I have Spectrum oils and others. Have been checking up a bit…Spot on!.
Thanks for the great video, Chef Pardus.
Just read about you in MR’s book a few weeks ago.
Can you post some videos showing basic knife skills from Skills 1?
I am jealous of the Wokinator.
Thank You, Chef Pardus, for heating up our lives even though we can’t all be in Mexico…this is a huge treat…Keep them coming!
Luis – I use high heat canola oil. It’s mild and can handle the heat.
Really enjoyed watching this, Chef Pardus, and it brings home that the difference between a good chef and an okay chef can be the attention to details. Managing temperature, knowing how each ingredient cooks (time, color changes, etc.), your mise en place … that’s what makes it ’simple’: the preparation and knowledge that comes before the 4-5 minutes at the wok.
BTW, are you left handed? I ask because you wear your wristwatch on your right hand, *and* use your left/dominant to hold the wok. Do you find this confuses some of your students? (I’m also left-handed, and when I took fencing in college, I had to mirror the Maestro’s right-handed motions on my own, without specific instruction.)
Bob – I’m dominantly right handed but have learned to be somewhat ambidextrous on the line. I’m sensitive to left handed students and take care to identify them and work with them from their point of view.
I wear a watch on my right wrist because no one ever told me not to and by the time I found out I wasn’t “supposed to”, it was already my habit and I saw no real reason to bow to convention.
Thanks for this nice post. I surely enjoyed every little part of it. I have you bookmarked and will be coming back.
Larry, I have a wok jus like that… an old Joyce Chen wok. I know what you mean when you say crappy factory seasoning.. been there done that.
But first things first, Canola high heat oil…must be in tha house.
then oven to 500 F and then burner on high..and then mis en place or whatever french for having your shit together is….but the point is Chef Pardus is taking this to a whole other level and I am on board for the ride. Vegetables done right… meats…sauces… Mario’s, Bitman and Wynneth’s and tha scrumptious delicious sexy spaniard chick Spain romp got nothing on this.
The way chef Pardus explains this dish makes it very simple to understand and finally assimilate. Its assembling different flavor layers on the wok.
Aromatic layer
Vegetable layer
Protein layer
Sauce layer
At least three of these layers can be/ should be done while prepping and even some of the vegetables like the broccoli are prepped before final assembly in the wok. Extremelly deceptive for it all seems to come together in a couple of minutes. Bringing each layer to perfection takes time and effort. Creating the actual gas fired wok kitchen effect is tricky if not impossible. Maybe having a burner on high and using the induction top to build the aromatic layer then switching to the high burner the rest of the way might work out.. I still favor the typhoon carbon steel wok because during the woking you can see how much chef Pardus is swishing and woking and wristing the the wok. I could never do that using the cast iron wok.
Very nice but why not fry the mushrooms in advance in a dry wok. If it is well seasoned it is a breeze. You can do a big batch, keep them slightly underdone and add them later just like the chicken. You’ll use a lot less oil which will make for a fresher dish.
Loss ends and answers for Tangerine Chicken:
Mart, I teach a basic culinary fundamentals class using Asian ingredients. My students are following a sequence designed to teach them kitchen organization, knife skills and the 7 cooking techniques of braising, poaching, steaming, frying, roasting, grilling. and saute (or stir fry), I am reinforcing the same techniques they have learned in previous courses, but with different flavors and textures. Once they achieve competency in these, they will study nutrition and learn to modify traditional styles to match modern sensibilities.
Of course your suggestion is valid, but it is out of pedagogical order for us.
Luis, in a better quality Chinese restaurant there would be a wok of boiling water and another of hot oil flanking the finishing wok. As the order came in, the chicken would be deep fried and the broccoli florets cooked ala minute, just before being dropped in with the aromatics and “raw” veg. The result is a fresher quality and also economical in that pre-cooked broccoli and chicken can’t be held over until tomorrow if you over-prep.
CB – knife skills video – yes, but probably in segments
Greg K, Do you mean a recipe that yields 3 cups of stir fried chicken with tofu? I’ve never heard of “3 cup Tofu/Chicken”, but that doesn’t mean anything, my not speaking or reading Cantonese or Mandarin would leave me unaware of many codified dishes. That being said, if it’s a stir fried dish and you can find a recipe for it (I suggest Barbara Tropp’s books), the procedure would be similar. I tend to cook from an ingredient/technique driven point of view, recipes are suggestions.
Hope this helps, and thanks again for your support and encouragement.
Chef Pardus,
3 Cup Chicken is a dish that is called something like sanbeji in China. The way I’ve had it prepared is equal amounts of light soy sauce, dark sesame oil, and rice wine reduced with minced garlic and ginger and finished with basil. I know the preparations that I’ve had have been Americanized in some way and I was wondering if you had the more classic technique for it.
I like your blog! The videos give a real sense. Thank You
Good information here. I enjoyed reading this and can’t wait for more. Keep up the good work.
Thank You Chef Pardus.
@Greg K: That is the traditional preparation for 3 Cups Chicken. The Taiwanese cookbooks I have advocate for using less oil and soy sauce to reduce the saltiness. The Pei Mei cookbook calls for 1/2C. sesame oil, 1C. wine and 1/4C. soy sauce (plus 1t. sugar) for 2 pounds of chicken. The other book I have uses slightly more soy sauce and a lot more sugar.
The method is stir-fry 7-8 cloves of garlic and 10 slices of ginger in the sesame oil, then add 2 red chiles (sliced) and then the chicken. When that is cooked through add the wine, soy sauce and sugar. Bring to a boil and cover and cook for about 20 minutes (until the sauce evaporates) then add the basil. Probably not authentic traditional but contemporary Taiwanese home cooking.