5 Vital Skills to Master From Cooking in a Wok…

Learn these basics and you’ll be able to turn everyday ingredients into seriously good home-cooked meals ideal before or after the snooker…

Get the WOK out – get the food on and enjoy the food and enjoy the snooker!

There’s nothing more enjoyable than watching the sizzle in a WOK. A bit like hearing the crisp sound of a long pot in snooker…

A wok can look deceptively simple. Put it on the heat, throw in some ingredients and stir them around. Dinner done.

Sounds so simple: right? Well, yes, and no, but a lot of people see WOK cooking as just for Asian cooking. It’s far more than that! This simple pan used for centuries is probably the most powerful tool in cooking – in modern day the WOK is competing against AIR FRYERS, OVENS, WOODFIRE PIZZA OVENS, and other new gadgets coming on the kitchen floor.

But, I keep going back to a WOK – and here’s why – it’s quick, it’s an event seeing food tossed around it or flipped over – and there’s more to it than just chucking in a load of food and stirring it around. It requires timing: patience, and knowing when to get the right flavours glowing on the plate.

Except the more I’ve cooked with one, the more I’ve realised that the wok isn’t really the skill. What you learn while using it is.

I’ve fried meat and fish in different oils. I’ve experimented with batter and breadcrumbs. I’ve cooked mince, noodles, vegetables and eggs. I’ve turned tins of soup into sauces and broths. I’ve experimented and continue to with budget ingredients including SPAM, balsamic vinegar and wholewheat noodles. Some combinations have worked better than others.

But every session has taught me something and continues to teach me something.

Here are five skills I think every home cook can learn from cooking regularly with a wok.

1. Learn to control heat

This might be the biggest one.

Different jobs require different levels of heat. Browning beef mince isn’t the same as gently cooking garlic. Frying battered fish isn’t the same as reducing a tomato sauce.

Eventually you begin to recognise what’s happening without constantly looking at a timer. You can hear the change in the sizzle, see how quickly something is colouring and know when the heat needs adjusting.

The lesson: Don’t just turn the hob on. Learn what the heat is doing to your food.

2. Learn how to fry something properly…

I’ve experimented with vegetable, sunflower, olive and rapeseed oils. For the light, crispy battered fish I’ve been making, I’ve personally had particularly good results with rapeseed oil.

But there’s more to frying than choosing an oil.

The oil needs to be appropriately hot. The ingredient shouldn’t be excessively wet. The coating needs to stay attached. And once you’ve achieved that lovely crisp exterior, don’t immediately drown it in sauce.

That’s why I’ve developed one of my own little rules:

Cook the crunch. Take it out. Build the dish. Put the crunch back at the end.

It has worked with sausage, SPAM and tempura basa.

3. Learn how to build and balance flavour

This has probably been one of my biggest discoveries.

Take my recent Balsamic Beef Mince Bolognese. Beef mince, tinned tomatoes, wholewheat noodles, chilli and balsamic vinegar.

The balsamic wasn’t merely there so I could put it in the recipe title. I could taste it. It gave another dimension to the tomatoes and beef, while the chilli provided a real kick.

That’s what experimenting teaches you.

Salt. Sweetness. Acidity. Heat. Richness. Umami.

You don’t need to become a food scientist. Start learning what happens when you change one of them.

And crucially: taste your food.

4. Master the apparently simple things

Frying an egg sounds easy.

Try producing one consistently with a beautifully intact yolk, properly cooked white and no tearing or sticking.

That’s a skill.

I’ve even started using an egg ring, which helps me control the shape. I’ve found a smaller ring that I can experiment with for round SPAM burgers too.

It’s the same with noodles. Or browning mince. Or chopping vegetables. Or making batter.

Simple doesn’t mean skill-free.

Master enough supposedly simple things and suddenly you have a pretty formidable collection of cooking techniques.

5. Learn to cook with what you’ve got

For me, this is where everything comes together.

I recently saw soba noodles while exploring ideas inspired by Okinawan food. They were considerably more expensive than the egg noodles I regularly use, so I bought wholewheat noodles instead.

And they were delicious.

Would I buy soba? Yes—and I’m going to try them as a one-off because I want to experience the difference. But WOK UNDERDOG isn’t about insisting that every home cook buy specialist ingredients.

It’s about understanding an idea and asking:

What have I already got? What can I afford? What could perform a similar job? And can I make something delicious with it?

That’s when you stop being completely dependent upon recipes.

You open the cupboard and see mince, noodles, tinned tomatoes and balsamic vinegar.

And instead of saying:

“I’ve got nothing to cook.”

You start saying:

“I wonder what I can make with that?”

The real skill

That’s perhaps the most important thing my wok has taught me.

Cooking isn’t about creating Michelin-starred food every evening. It’s about developing enough confidence with the fundamentals that you can make good home-cooked food that works. And once the basics are there, you can go roam…

And strangely enough, it reminds me of something I’ve learned through snooker:

Basics will always win.

Learn the basics of cooking. Practise them. Make mistakes. Taste the results. Work out why something succeeded—or why it didn’t.

Eventually you’re no longer just learning recipes.

You’re learning how to cook.

And once you can do that, you’ll rarely be short of ideas for dinner.

The WOK is a powerful tool – get it out and start becoming a WOK samurai…and learn the basics…