Chinese Wok

Chinese wok is called "dar shao" ( 大勺) in Chinese. If directly translated, it means "Big Spoon".

It is in a shape of a semi-sphere. Its semi-sphere shape has several advantages.

Chinese wok - the main Chinese cooking equipment.

Firstly, it makes the oil in the wok deeper than flat frying pans so that the oil can submerge the food materials more easily. It is the case in both deep-frying and stir-frying.

Secondly, the slop makes it easier to stir and mix the food inside. In such kind of semi-sphere shape wok, when you push the food materials in the wok up near the edge, it will slide back to the Centrex automatically. It makes the mixing and stirring much quicker than in a flat pan.

Skillful chefs, when stirring food in a Chinese wok, they can turn the food materials in it up-side-down as a whole by waving up the far side of the wok a little. This waving skill can make mixing and stirring very quickly done. This is important when cooking dishes that require short cooking time. You can see this skill in the Chinese food cooking videos below.

The standard heating source in Chinese cooking is coal fire or gas fire that has flame. However, nowadays electric kitchen stoves are used a lot. In such circumstances, you may have to use a wok that has a small flat part at the center. Otherwise the wok cannot sit stably on the stove and the wok's part that can absorb heat is too small.

A stainless-steel hand-spoon used in Chinese cooking.

In Chinese cooking, the most common hand tool used with a wok is a metal Hand-Spoon. A hand-spoon is used to stir the food in the wok. Professional chefs would normally like to use this kind of spoon-shape hand tool rather than a spade-shape one because it is also very handy to use it to scoop some water, oil, or food materials, and put it into the wok. At the end of cooking, it is also very handy to use it to take food from inside the wok onto the dish. Nowadays, because many woks have a special layer of non-sticky coat, wooden hand tool is required.

These often-used Chinese cooking equipments can be found in some relatively big Chinese food supermarkets in western countries. These bigger Chinese food supermarkets not only supply goods to ordinary customers but also to Chinese restaurants.

The above video is at an on-street Chinese food stand specialized in fried rice. The chef is very skillful in using the wok and hand-spoon. His hand-spoon is larger than normal size for quick operation. His fried rice is featured for its instant service and a plenty of auxiliary materials including beans, peanuts, salted vegetables etc. However, as a instant service, he uses big fire all the time, which would not allow the egg to be soft.

In comparison, please see the following video, which is a more delicate version of Egg Fried Rice. He cooks the egg with small fire, and then takes it out. Cooks rice, then puts back the cooked egg. It takes longer time.