It is often assumed that wok cooking is better on gas, but a growing number of specialists in Asian cuisine say otherwise.
Award-winning chef Neil Perry is a long-term fan of induction cooking.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer
Victor Liong, whose modern Chinese restaurant in Melbourne, Lee Ho Fook, has repeatedly won two coveted Good Food Guide hats, is part of a growing number of chefs preparing to make the switch to induction cooking.
Liong’s newly opened Singapore restaurant Quenino is fully electric, with woks sitting in custom-made induction domes. Induction elements cool faster than gas burners, making cleaning quicker and easier, he saves money on expensive and toxic cleaning chemicals, and the radiant heat is vastly reduced, making the kitchen a more comfortable environment for chefs.
He’s now preparing to convert his Melbourne kitchen to induction. At present, he estimates four out of five injuries in the restaurant are from cleaning the kitchen after a busy shift and accidentally touching the hot stove where the wok burner has sat for five hours.
Despite assumptions to the contrary, Liong said Chinese cooking is often better done on induction than gas burners.
“In a home cook setting, the argument’s almost null because the gas flame doesn’t get hot enough to achieve flames from the sides, or wok hei,” Liong said. “I was stir-frying some vegetables at home on a gas stove the other day, and it was so slow.”
Nor is he persuaded that the tradition of cooking on open flames is a reason not to make the switch.
“I think that idea is funny because gas cookery in and around Asia has only been around [about] 80 years, right? So that kind of association with wok hei and big char … that’s only been an identity in South Asian cooking for 80 years. It’s not like my great-grandfather used to cook like this.”
Food writer and cookbook author Adam Liaw uses both gas and induction and believes that wok hei is fine on a domestic gas stove. However, he said: “If I had to choose one or the other, I’d choose induction.”
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Liaw said a traditional round-bottomed wok would not work well on induction, but ones with a square base work just as well. He found induction much better for making caramel or controlling the temperature for a slow simmer.
“I was probably a bit of an induction sceptic years ago as well, but then when you start using it, you really see the benefits of it,” Liaw said.
Simon Toohey, a former MasterChef contestant who is working with Bank Australia in a paid role to promote induction cooking, said induction did not have to be expensive and could be accessible to renters.
“My mother-in-law doesn’t want to cook with gas any more, so she’s put a chopping board over her gas cooktop and has got a portable induction cooker that plugs into the power point,” Toohey said. “If you wanted to go bigger you’d have to make sure your induction cooktop is the same size and get it professionally installed.”
Toohey said an induction cooker runs through an electromagnetic force, so the pots and plans needed to be magnetic. This can be easily checked using a fridge magnet, but generally cast iron, enamel and stainless steel are fine.
MasterChef this year is sponsored by Australian Gas Network, a subsidiary of Australian Gas Infrastructure Group, and is promoting the use of “renewable gas”. This drew complaints to the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
A Network 10 spokesperson said: “The MasterChef Australia kitchen uses gas and this season we’ve been able to use biomethane, a renewable gas made from organic waste.”
Jones from the Global Cooksafe Coalition said the sponsorship was disappointing, and pointed out that British MasterChef is entirely using induction cooking.
“Biomethane is great but it is not available to consumers, it is being made especially for the MasterChef show and a normal person can’t buy it, and if they could it wouldn’t be affordable,” she said.
