What type of Wok do you use ?

[buckytom]

We have gas, but not piped in natural gas. We have a liquid propane tank buried in the backyard. The LP is delivered like home heating oil.

The reason we don't have natural gas is that it's too difficult and expensive to run gas lines to each house over or through the granite and iron mountains.

 

[Cinisajoy]

We have gas, but not piped in natural gas. We have a liquid propane tank buried in the backyard. The LP is delivered like home heating oil.

The reason we don't have natural gas is that it's too difficult and expensive to run gas lines to each house over or through the granite and iron mountains.

Buried? I know people with propane and usually the tanks are above ground.

 

[buckytom]

Yes, that's what I've seen mostly too.

I looked into it before we bought the house. We were uncomfortable buying a house with a bomb in the yard.

But so long as you have stable soil (ours was blasted out of rock, so no worries) and good drainage so the tank can't float (again, everything runs off the rock), you can bury an LP tank that's built for it.

 

[Elawin]

All of my woks have handles that are unsuitable for putting in the oven and I cannot think of a situation where I would have need to do so.

That's the whole point of it being dual-purpose! German engineering again Both places where I lived in Germany only had two rings on the hob, but both had large ovens and most of the cooking was done in the oven. I often just use my oven if I'm baking or roasting something; I just cook everything else in my enamel pans or pyrex dishes in the oven instead of on the hob. So a wok that doubles as an oven dish would suit me.

 

[epicuric]

Malfunctioning gas is the biggest reason for no gas in newer apartments.

I would sooner trust a properly installed gas system over an electrical appliance. Sadly, most electrical appliances these days are cheap cr*p made in China. There have been a spate of scary incidents lately, including tumble driers that burst into flame (I'm still not sure that regulators have forced a product recall, despite dozens of fires) then the terrible Grenfell Towers tragedy, allegedly caused by a faulty refrigerator. A couple of years ago I had an Ipad battery booster (made in China) explode on me when I was in bed. Luckily I was awake at the time. We are soon to have a shiny new nuclear power station in the UK. Who did we call in to build it? The Chinese. What could possibly go wrong?

 

[Yorky]

We have gas, but not piped in natural gas. We have a liquid propane tank buried in the backyard. The LP is delivered like home heating oil.

The reason we don't have natural gas is that it's too difficult and expensive to run gas lines to each house over or through the granite and iron mountains.

We use the 13 kg bottles and have one on line and one spare. They are kept in a little "lean-to" house outside (tube through the kitchen wall). One bottle will last us 4 to 5 months but it's sod's law that it always needs changing in the dark (and half way through cooking a meal).

Most folks around here only have one and keep it inside which I find unnecessarily risky.

The bottles cost around US$ 30.00 and US$ 10.00 to fill.

[Edit: for "fill" read - replace an empty one with a full one]

 

[Elawin]

I would sooner trust a properly installed gas system over an electrical appliance. Sadly, most electrical appliances these days are cheap cr*p made in China. There have been a spate of scary incidents lately, including tumble driers that burst into flame (I'm still not sure that regulators have forced a product recall, despite dozens of fires) then the terrible Grenfell Towers tragedy, allegedly caused by a faulty refrigerator. A couple of years ago I had an Ipad battery booster (made in China) explode on me when I was in bed. Luckily I was awake at the time. We are soon to have a shiny new nuclear power station in the UK. Who did we call in to build it? The Chinese. What could possibly go wrong?

I wouldn't trust a gas appliance these days; there are many stories about incorrectly serviced or installed gas appliances causing death by fumes or by explosions, or by them failing to ignite properly. As for most electrical appliances being cheap cr*p made in China, my Hotpoint washing machine and fridge are made in the UK, and the dishwasher is made in the EU (which covers a multitude of sins). My Whirlpool freezer has no country of manufacture on it at all, but the Whirlpool oven and hob were made in Korea. My Windows phone was made in Vietnam and, presumably, the charger. In fact a quick scoot around the house shows that only 3 small kitchen appliances have labels showing they are made in China - the Tesco microwave and coffee maker, and the Kenwood food mixer.

 

[MrsDangermouse]

I don't know about Bangkok or other large cities but domestic gas pipelines are unheard of here in the sticks. All consumer gas here is bottled and virtually every house uses gas for cooking (we have little need for heating) except in the outlying villages where they may use charcoal.

Sounds very similar to the situation in Cairo - no mains gas in our apartment, instead we had a 15kg gas bottle in one of the kitchen cupboards.

I don't know about everywhere, but here there is no common in houses. Most apartments are all electric. They say it cuts down on fires.

Since the Ronan Point explosion in the 1968 there has been no mains gas to tower blocks in the UK so they have to be all electric for heating and cooking. Its not so much about avoiding fire, more that the force of a gas explosion can impact the structural integrity of a high-rise building.

Getting back to the subject of woks.....

I have a "proper" 35cm wok similar to this one which I use for stir frys. It has a small flat bottom so although I do have a wok stand on my gas hob I don't need to use it.

I also have a 25cm pan like this one - which they describe as a stir fry pan. Its really too small for a stir fry (unless you're only doing 1 portion) but its probably the most useful pan I have: I use it for pasta sauces, scrambled eggs, shallow frying and lots of other things too. Its the perfect shape for things that you want to saute and flip.

 

[Morning Glory]

Sounds very similar to the situation in Cairo - no mains gas in our apartment, instead we had a 15kg gas bottle in one of the kitchen cupboards.

You were in Cairo? I lived there for a year (a long long time ago) and your post brought back the memory of the apartment - which as you say had a large bottle of gas in a cupboard.

 

[Elawin]

Since the Ronan Point explosion in the 1968 there has been no mains gas to tower blocks in the UK so they have to be all electric for heating and cooking. Its not so much about avoiding fire, more that the force of a gas explosion can impact the structural integrity of a high-rise building.

Not strictly true. The (new) recommendations merely stated that all new buildings constructed after November 1968 and over five storeys were required to be able to resist an explosive force of 34 kPa (4.9 psi) (a value still used up until 2014). Only buildings that did not reach these values had to be converted or be supplied with electricity only. When I was training as a draughtswoman in a civil engineering office in 1967, none of the building regulations covered buildings above five storeys, yet the various Councils were putting up tower blocks all over the place. The tallest building we designed was a commercial building of five storeys, and even then the top storey was used as a dog kennels, complete with exercise yard. One problem with Ronan Point (and other blocks) was that the kitchens where the gas supplies were mostly used were on the outside corners of the building. The tower blocks where I lived had the living rooms on the corners and were deemed safer.

 

[MrsDangermouse]

Not strictly true. The (new) recommendations merely stated that all new buildings constructed after November 1968 and over five storeys were required to be able to resist an explosive force of 34 kPa (4.9 psi) (a value still used up until 2014). Only buildings that did not reach these values had to be converted or be supplied with electricity only. When I was training as a draughtswoman in a civil engineering office in 1967, none of the building regulations covered buildings above five storeys, yet the various Councils were putting up tower blocks all over the place. The tallest building we designed was a commercial building of five storeys, and even then the top storey was used as a dog kennels, complete with exercise yard. One problem with Ronan Point (and other blocks) was that the kitchens where the gas supplies were mostly used were on the outside corners of the building. The tower blocks where I lived had the living rooms on the corners and were deemed safer.

Interesting info thanks For some reason Ronan Point has always stuck with me since we learned about it at school - maybe they simplified the changes it prompted for our young minds (or maybe we should always question what we're told? Not so easy in the days before the internet though). Its still true that you don't see many UK tower blocks with mains gas these days - but maybe that's because its cheaper to simply make it all electric than build to the required standard needed for gas.

 

[Elawin]

Interesting info thanks For some reason Ronan Point has always stuck with me since we learned about it at school - maybe they simplified the changes it prompted for our young minds (or maybe we should always question what we're told? Not so easy in the days before the internet though). Its still true that you don't see many UK tower blocks with mains gas these days - but maybe that's because its cheaper to simply make it all electric than build to the required standard needed for gas.

I remember Ronan Point well, although I never actually saw it. Canning Town wasn't exactly the sort of place you frequented in those days.

Since then of course, there seem to have been loads of gas explosions in houses and flats, especially low-rise ones, which are not covered by exactly the same building regs. There was even one a few months ago very near me, which caused a major trunk to be partially closed for several days, while they investigated the explosion and cleared up all the rubble. This low rise block was newly built too - but the difference was, it was all-electric! It turned out that the occupiers of that flat had been growing cannabis and were using bottled gas to supply the heat - probably so that they did not draw attention to themselves by using a large amount of electricity! It was a hell of a mess, and still has not been repaired.

Our Council banned the use of bottled gas and paraffin heaters in homes at some point in the 1970s. It was not a regulation when I lived in the high-rise block, but definitely had come into effect by the time I moved into my present home in 1976. It covered private housing too, but is a regulation that is often ignored. The only exceptions were the residential caravan sites (some of which caravans didn't even have an electricity supply) and the odd few older properties on the outer fringes of the borough which had no permanent gas supply, although of course they are allowed to have an LPG tank outside. The regulations did not apply to commercial premises either in those days. The shop and the warehouse I worked in in the late 1970s had Calor gas heating, as did my own shop in the late 1980s/early 1990s.

I don't particularly like using gas. When I lived in the tower block, the gas water heater went up in flames one morning. I ran and turned the gas off at my meter as it really frightened me. The emergency repair people asked me to turn the gas back on and try lighting it again - you can imagine my reply, which was not ladylike! I got rid of the gas cooker in my house about 20 years ago when I discovered that one of my Alsatians could turn the gas taps on (!). And when the gas board decided to bring back the standing charge a couple of years back, I had the meter removed entirely so now my house no longer has a gas supply, which suits me fine. Even worse, when my ex and his first wife got divorced he wanted to remove the gas fires from their home and bring them round here. He had installed the fires himself even though that was illegal, and had taken the pipes directly from the meter. There weren't even gas taps to turn the supply to those heaters off. She and the kids got the house, and I dread to think what would have happened if she had decided to get a gas cooker.....

 

[Yorky]

Many years ago, early 70s, we were living in a mobile home in Carstairs Junction, Lanarkshire and although we had electric, heating, cooking and water heating were by bottled gas. I started work at 06:00 every morning so was out of bed at 05:00 and in the winter it was bloody cold. My routine was to get out of bed and go first to the kitchen to light a gas ring prior to taking a shower. Then get dressed in the kitchen. One morning the regulator on the gas bottle must have malfunctioned because of the cold and when I attempted to light the stove, it exploded blowing open every window in the home. I've never known my wife move so fast. Anyway the "explosion" blew out the "fire" so I was lucky to only suffer a crinkled fringe, a loss of eyebrows and most of my moustache and a burnt tongue. I was extremely careful in the future.

[However, I don't think that we had a wok at the time]

 

[Elawin]

.....although we had electric, heating, cooking and water heating were by bottled gas.

Our caravan even had a gas fridge, as did quite a few of the houses round here.
I didn't have a wok then, and still haven't.

 

[Yorky]

Our caravan even had a gas fridge, as did quite a few of the houses round here.
I didn't have a wok then, and still haven't.

I had a gas fridge in my subsequent 14 footer which I used to haul to Silverstone and Brand's Hatch. I never understood how it worked.