The Wok: Recipes and Techniques

Kenji is one of my favorite food people. His Serious Eats articles, his first book “The Food Lab”, his Youtube channel. They’re all excellent content, full of science-based cooking tips and a big dose of friendly vibes. I was excited to get The Wok and to get a wok.

That impulse didn’t last long. I liked the book quite a bit! But it put me off wok cooking, specifically stir fry. He does a great job explaining the techniques. But they sound so challenging! Precise tossing, super hot pans, everything moving fast, velveting.. It seemed like a lot. And do I really need another big pan in the house? Maybe stir fry is something I get only via takeout and restaurants.

Fortunately the book has a lot more in it than just stir fry. Really only a third of the book is even wok specific, a lot of the recipes don’t use a wok at all or will braise just fine in a Western pot. So really the book is a great tour of mostly Asian cooking. His explanations of how to use Chinese sauces is fantastic. So is his collection of relatively simple but flavorful dishes.

It’s a mistake to call the book “recipes”, it’s not a traditional cookbook. Most of it is really more a description of techniques. At its best the book is a sort of choose-your-own adventure where he explains how to prep vegetables and proteins to make a dish and then gives suggestions for good flavoring. This matches exactly how I think about cooking, and I think a lot of other people. It’s a great cooking writing style.

I seldom sit down and read a cookbook cover to cover like a regular book but I’m glad I did with this one. I should add the Kindle edition is quite nicely done, I may actually prefer it to the hardback.