Wok meets grill

Wok - Asian flavour on the grill

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The secret behind asian street food cuisine

Authentic Asian street food tends to be about simplicity and flavour. Across the most renowned dishes, from Indonesian nasi goreng to the extraordinarily flavoursome Pad Thai, served from stalls across Thailand, the foundations of Asian street food are generally deep, unctuous umami, with a hum of heat and a smack of something sharp to top it off.

But most of all it’s about freshness. These are not dishes that have been sitting around in their own juices all day. Rather, they’ve been prepared in a literal flash of flames and unparalleled heat – particularly when it comes to a Chinese street food classic, the stir-fry.

It's all about freshness.

Indeed, any experienced wok user knows that the secret to exceptional stir-frying lies in two key factors: heat and preparation. And while it’s possible to achieve good results on a stovetop, you simply can’t access the true power of a wok with only a burner below, because the pan also needs heat to surround it.

A wok and a bed of white-hot charcoal go hand in hand.

A reliable, fierce source of heat and variety of freshly prepared ingredients are equally important. The stir-fry’s magic rests on quickly blasting the ingredients in the wok, giving them the beautiful bold flavours of Chinese cooking, while retaining their crunch and tenderness. Anything longer than a flash in the pan is absolutely off the table when it comes to proper stir-frying. And for this reason, there’s a secret that Asian street food vendors know to be true: a wok and a bed of white-hot charcoal go hand in hand.

How to barbecue with a wok

But producing that bed of coals takes time, which is why, to recreate this stir-fry environment at home, the combination of the Weber Genesis® II gas barbecue and a heavy, rounded cast iron wok are just perfect.

Together, this set-up allows the user to achieve both the unique heat of wok grilling, while also being specially designed to offer stability and control. And this combination is also perfect for other Asian street food classics – whether it’s thin, flash-fried meat, crispy fried rice or rich Japanese soups.

Kitchen knowledge – what is Soy Sauce?

Soy sauce is one of the oldest forms of fermentation in human history. Its deep, sweet and quintessentially umami flavour comes mostly from long-fermented (traditionally underground) soybeans.

Soy sauce forms the basis of flavour for countless dishes in China, its place of origin, and across East Asia.

Ingredients

  • circleServes: 4
  • 1 red onion, thinly sliced
  • 3 cloves of garlic, thinly sliced
  • 7 cm piece of ginger, grated
  • 4 spring onions, cut into 2 cm lengths
  • 350 g firm tofu, cut into small cubes
  • 100 g mangetout, halved
  • 50 g fresh shiitake mushrooms, sliced
  • 1 red or yellow pepper, thinly sliced
  • 1 fresh red chilli , thinly sliced
  • ½ a bunch of fresh coriander, roughly chopped
  • 100 g unsalted cashew nuts
  • Vegetable oil
  • 2 tbsp low-salt soy sauce
  • 1 tbsp sesame oil
  • 1 lime
  • Salt, Pepper, Sugar
  •  
  • Special Equipment
  • GBS Wok

Instructions

  • 1. Pre-heat the barbecue for direct grilling at 200–230°C. Mix the garlic, ginger, chilli, spring onion and red onion together. Mix all the other vegetables together, keeping the coriander to one side. Keep the two mixes separate.

  • 2. Put the wok onto the grill and let it heat up. Add a splash of oil – it should start to smoke – then add the tofu, season well with salt and pepper and brown. Transfer to a plate.

  • 3. Add another splash of oil. Add the chilli and the onion mix. Stir for a second before adding the other mix. Flip and toss the vegetables in the wok if you can, and keep the vegetables moving with a wooden spoon, turning them over every few seconds so they all keep feeling the heat at the bottom of the wok. Season with a good pinch of sugar, salt and pepper.

  • 4. After a minute or two, the vegetables should have begun to soften. Add the tofu, soy sauce and sesame oil and stir in. After about 30 seconds, the vegetables are ready. Place the vegetables onto a serving dish, sprinkle with the cashews and coriander, squeeze some lime and enjoy! Serve with boiled jasmine rice with roasted sesame seeds.

  • All of our recipes are created by our expert chefs at the Weber Grill Academy. View more inspirational recipes or book a course at the Grill Academy now.

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