The Wok

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.