Wok Star Eleanor Hoh

Be a Wok Star!

Tips

5 Tips to Jumpstart Your New Year Resolutions

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Happy New Year! Every year, we start with a clean slate to stay slim and trim.  These 5 Tips to Jumpstart Your New Year Resolutions will help you whether you want a healthy approach to dieting or just easy ways to cook up fast tasty weeknight dinners!

Wok Tortilla Omelet

Here’s how to do it…
Shake up your routine so you never know what to expect and you won’t get bored!  Above all, treat your dinner as if it’s the last meal you’ll ever have on a desert island! What would you want them to be? A few ingredients and you can’t go wrong.

Chuck out using recipes this year and try a new way to tackle weeknight dinners that will make you a Star or a “Wok Star” if you have my Kit! Even if you don’t have a wok, try frying in a skillet or pot as long as it’s not non-stick!

  1. Buy just 2-3 different fresh & seasonal veggies and 2 kinds of protein on a Sunday. Buying a week’s worth is overwhelming plus makes your trip longer & stressful. I can be in and out of store in 15 minutes or less.
  2. Make ingredients work in a variety of ways: stir fry one dinner, soup for another, stew for yet another, par boil & have with salad dressing, steam.
  3. Save time by cooking up a week’s worth of quinoa instead of starchy rice/pasta and notice your energy soar. To prevent spoilage, store quinoa in containers and freeze, take out night before.
  4. Stock 5 basic seasonings that instantly make your cooking taste GOOD!  Wok Stars use these same seasonings in Hispanic, Italian, Korean, Spanish. I call it TSPC: tamari (Japanese soy sauce, get San-J Intl. without MSG and gluten free), sherry (get medium drinking not cooking sherry), pepper (white pepper to change it up), cornstarch (for marinading your protein and thicken sauces)and of course, chili sauce (Huy Fong garlic chili sauce or sambal olek.) I used these seasonings in salad dressing as well.
  5. Stock these fresh ingredients: scallions, cilantro, fresh limes, garlic, ginger. Other goodies to have on hand: Miso paste, dried shitake or oyster mushrooms.

I’m working on more Tips and Techniques, so subscribe to my free newsletter in right side bar to get the latest updates!

I’ll leave you with a useful post, “How do I come up with a dish?”  I think once you get this, you’ll be on your way to cooking without recipes, yay!

5 Minute Wonder Soup
 
Miso Soup and Salad
Quinoa salad
Steam Chinese Meatloaf in your Wok
Par boil your rappini in your wok!
Dried oyster mushrooms are handy to have around!
Marinade protein like shrimp with TSPC!

Top 12 Wok Tips

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As a wok enthusiast, cooking teacher and creator of a Wok Star Kit, I hear a lot of common mistakes people make when attempting wok cooking.

Anyone can be a Wok Star with the right wok, right technique, right heat!
This post was originally on rasamalaysia but I’ve revised a little. There were many wonderful comments and questions which may help you, so check it out. Ask me questions in the comment box below.
There’s a lot of very confusing information out there, so, here are my…

TOP 12 WOK TIPS

1. Cooking in a wok requires the right technique, the right heat, the right seasonings = Wok Star!
2. Declutter your kitchen: use your wok for stir frying, steaming, stewing, deep frying, smoking, searing and soups (see photos below.)
3. Leave your wok and portable gas stove setup out at all times so it’s convenient. If you don’t see it, you don’t use it…
4. Getting the wrong wok & not seasoning it right can set you up for failure.
5. A traditional lightweight, thin walled, round bottom cast iron wok is BEST. Woks with exterior enamel or coating take longer to heat and transfer heat to your food! Who wants to lift a 15 lb. wok every night? I give a comparison with carbon steel woks here.
6. One handle woks tip over when you have food in it plus the handle gets in the way.
7. Round bottom woks need direct flames i.e. gas for maximum contact & to control your heat.
8. Flat bottom woks do not give you a natural stir fry motion, uses more oil because of more surface area & were made for electric stoves. See no.11.
9. Non-stick woks cannot be used above medium heat according to manufacturer’s warning but high heat is ESSENTIAL to sear meat and for crunchy veggies.
10. Gas stove owners: use the smallest burner so heat is focused for your wok.
11. Electric stove owners: a portable butane gas stove solves the problem of cooking with your wok! You’ll have the BEST of both heat sources. Use your electric for flat pans/pots and gas stove for your wok.
12. A Wok Star is someone who develops their own cooking style and thinks outside the box.

 

 
Ask me a question!
 

Whole Foods Market Salad Bar

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Good to see Whole Foods Market in South Beach added a few more ‘protein’ items to their Salad Bar! If I had to eat there on a daily basis, this could get truly BORING!!!

C’mon, give us some variety! Take a look at my 5 Lunch Tips for some simple ideas.

Shrimp salad, cabbage almond slaw, quinoa lentil, feta olive orzo, plain toufu, beets, field greens.

Sent from my iPhone