This thing can cook! I do stir drys every couple of weeks for my family. I was painfully aware that they were, at best, adequate, limited as I was to cooking on an electric stove with a big non-stick skillet. For a while, I have been looking at big kitchen ranges (48" wide), to replace my 32" JennAire when it finally gives out. I noticed that it was possible to get these stoves with wok burners--cool, but it also consumed half of the space on the top of a 48" range, not cool, especially because I also wanted a grill and griddle on the stove! Can't be done. Meanwhile, I watched the cook at the nearby Panda Express, and it was clear that serious stir-frying required a big wok, huge amounts of thermal energy and a really good exhaust system--it was not gonna work well in my kitchen, where the range is in an island. So what to do? Well, when I looked on line, the first products I saw were the $50 low end propane fired wok cookers, they were not gonna cut it. Then I saw the >$1000 units designed to be built into some sort for grand outdoor kitchen--no, not gonna do that. Finally, I saw the several mid-range cookers, like this one. Seemed worth a shot at $160. OK, this thing is not likely to be a lifetime investment, like my Giant Green Egg smoker, which looks and works the same as it did when I got it for a birthday gift 15 years ago. But it is not too badly built. The legs are reasonably sturdy, although I promptly went out and got the materials to make a chain web tying the legs together, to prevent any potential for leaning on the thing and breaking a leg. The wok itself is solid, nothing fancy. It would have been nice if they had taken some steps to make the handles stay cool, this is something I will have to fix--for now, I pulled out my rarely used welding gloves. Once cooking, there is not often a need to manipulate the wok, it is not like the big single handle woks you see Chinese chefs using, tossing the food around. Food manipulation is done with the implements. But break out the welding gloves none-the-less. The sheet metal frame is thin, this is likely the first part that will fail, especially in areas prone to rust. Keep it painted with high temperature BBQ paint, keep it out of the rain, should give decent service. The burner is very basic, it appears to be cast iron although I have read that it is not all cast iron. The gas control valve--very basic, but I kind of like that, I could easily replace the valve if it every fails (unlikely). The leg extensions feature works fine. At full extension the tripod seemed sturdy and stable, no likelihood of accidentally knocking the whole thing over, at a good, comfortable height for a 6' me. On the other hand, the ring that holds the wok is a bit undersized, in my view. The big 22" wok sits fine on it if you don't move the wok, but it all seems a bit on the precarious side--seems like it would feel safer with perhaps an 18-20" wok. Or a bigger ring. Still, it is serviceable, if you are careful. Keep the dog far away. The utensils are of good quality, probably hold up for a while if properly cared for. The instruction manual is not great, but again usable. Same for the included DVD. Did I mention that this thing cooks up a storm! After stripping the protective coating with a pyrrolidone based paint stripper (easy to do), I seasoned the wok according to instruction on line that recommended the use of oil, salt and potato peels. It worked OK, but after further reading, I was convinced that the salt and potatoes sere superfluous, and just went at it again with a bit of safflower oil and a lot of heat. This really built up a nice seasoning pretty quickly. BTW, they recommended peanut oil, but around here, peanut oil is only available in massive, expensive jugs, so a quick check of the internet indicated that there are several other oils with equal or higher smoke temps, so I used safflower oil. Avocado oil has the highest smoke point, I was tempted to use that, which is readily available in small containers. Maybe I will experiment with it in the future. I would think that the degree of unsaturation of the oil would impact it's ability to polymerize, but I couldn't find anything on this on line. Finally, time for the stir fry to start--chicken breast with various veggies and assorted sauces, cooked to order for my wife and son and of course me. The thermometer that comes with the rig is OK if you are deep frying or boiling, but not of much use for stir frying. I got out my Fluke remote reading infrared thermometer, one of my best purchases ever, I find many uses for it. As expected, when the oiled wok hit ~500 degrees, the safflower and sesame oil mix started to smoke, and in went the chicken, followed by the veggies, and eventually the sauces, per the instructions on the video. After each addition, I goosed the gas, and then turned it down about 30 seconds later when the wok was back to 450-500 degrees. Fabulous! I have to say that it all worked spectacularly well! I was expecting the need to make excuses, but none were necessary. Easy as fishin'! Really restaurant quality food, cooked in a couple of minutes per batch, custom tailored to the tastes of each family member. For a single batch, you could probably cook enough food to feed perhaps 6 people. Beyond that, you would probably need still more heat and a bigger wok. But a big single batch took me only 5 minutes, so in 10 minutes, you could feed 12, etc. I have seem other wok burners that boast 2.5x the output of this one. It is hard to imagine that that much heat is needed in other than a production environment (restaurant). 65,000 btus seems totally adequate for a 22" wok. This stove can be used with flat bottomed pans and pots. It fits my paella pan, another weak spot in my cooking, but is not appropriate for cooking paella--you need finely distributed heat for this, not all in the middle as you need for woking. It will clearly fit a turkey frying pot, and half of the instruction say that you can deep fry turkeys, the other half tell you you can never use this rig for cooking turkeys. I am guessing that the anti-turkey thing is driven by their CSA approval, so is a legal technicality. While I have not tried it, I cannot see how it won't work. Deep frying turkeys in these outdoor rigs is an inherently dangerous thing, so no different here. Take the dog to the neighbor's house! They suggest you can deep fry in the wok. While surely you could, I would not have the courage to deep fry in the 22" wok, given the marginal size of the wok retaining ring. I would either get a pot with a fry basket, or at least get a smaller wok. I plan to get a pot. I don't do real french fries anymore, because you need more oil and or more heat than I could generate in the kitchen, that will change now. Same with tempura--my stove just doesn't have the BTUs, but this rig surely does. But deep frying in the 22" wok--not me. Not even with my welding leather jacket! Installing the legs takes about 15 minutes, so if you plan to assemble/disassemble this, as for camping, plan accordingly and bring extra bolts. Next up, a paella stove.
