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Information about Wok Hei

Wok hei
Cooking in a wok
Traditional Chinese:
Simplified Chinese:
Hanyu Pinyin:huòqì
Cantonese Jyutping:wok6 hei3
Wok hei is a term in Cantonese Chinese referring to the flavour, tastes, and "essence" imparted by a hot wok on the food. The word hei (romanization based on Cantonese Chinese) is equivalent to qi (romanization based on Mandarin Chinese). The term is sometimes rendered as wok chi in Western cookbooks.

When cooked correctly, the "essence" of the food comes through the flavour and the dish is said to "have wok hei". To impart wok hei, the food must be cooked in a wok over a high flame while being stirred and tossed quickly. In practical terms, the flavour imparted by chemical compounds results from caramelization and the Maillard reactions that come from charring and searing of the food at very high heat in excess of 200 °C (approximately 400 °F). A large amount of cooking oil is often used to enhance wok hei. As such, the food prepared that way can be greasy but full of flavour.

References

  • Grace Young, The Breath of a Wok: Unlocking the Spirit of Chinese Wok Cooking Through Recipes and Lore, Simon and Schuster. 2004.

See also

  • Beef chow fun - a Chinese dish said to require plenty of wok hei to acquire deliciousness
Traditional Chinese
Child systems Simplified Chinese
Chữ Nôm
Sister systems Hanja, Kanji

ISO 15924 Hant

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Simplified Chinese

Sister systems Kanji, Chữ Nôm

ISO 15924 Hans

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  • **
Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; Traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音
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Cantonese or Yue (粵語) is a major Chinese dialect group or language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. The exact number of Cantonese speakers is unknown due to a lack of statistics and census data.
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Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.


Jyutping (sometimes spelled Jyutpin
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Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.


Standard Mandarin, also known as Modern Standard Chinese
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Pinyin, more formally called Hanyu Pinyin (Simplified Chinese: 汉语拼音; Traditional Chinese: 漢語拼音
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Cantonese or Yue (粵語) is a major Chinese dialect group or language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. The exact number of Cantonese speakers is unknown due to a lack of statistics and census data.
..... Click the link for more information.
This page contains Chinese text.
Without proper rendering support, you may see question marks, boxes, or other symbols instead of Chinese characters.


Jyutping (sometimes spelled Jyutpin
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Cantonese or Yue (粵語) is a major Chinese dialect group or language, a member of the Sino-Tibetan family of languages. The exact number of Cantonese speakers is unknown due to a lack of statistics and census data.
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The wok/ is a versatile round-bottomed cooking vessel originating in China. It is used especially in East and Southeast Asia. The word "wok" comes from the Cantonese Chinese word for the item: "wok" (鑊).
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romanization (or Latinization, also spelled romanisation or Latinisation) is the representation of a word or language with the Roman (Latin) alphabet, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system (or none).
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QI, standing for Quite Interesting, is a comedy panel game television quiz show created and produced by John Lloyd, hosted by Stephen Fry, and featuring regular panellist Alan Davies.
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Mandarin
官話 Guānhuà
Spoken in: People's Republic of China 
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Caramelization or caramelisation (see spelling differences) is the oxidation of sugar, a process used extensively in cooking for the resulting nutty flavor and brown color.

Like the Maillard reaction, caramelization is a type of non-enzymatic browning.
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The Maillard reaction is a chemical reaction between an amino acid and a reducing sugar, usually requiring heat. Like caramelization, it is a form of non-enzymatic browning.
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Cooking oil is purified fat of plant or animal origin, which is liquid at room temperature.

Some of the many different kinds of edible vegetable oils include: olive oil, palm oil, soybean oil, canola oil, pumpkin seed oil, corn oil, sunflower oil, safflower oil, peanut oil,
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Beef chow fun is a staple Cantonese dish, made from stir-frying beef, hefen (wide rice noodles) and bean sprouts. It has became a necessary dish in Chinese yum cha restaurants in Guangdong, Hong Kong, and even overseas, as well as in
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