How to Cook Chinese Food Even Kids Like—Without a Wok

Manny Howard

I know it afflicts many fellow home cooks, but I'm rarely plagued by magical thinking in the kitchen. I enjoy cooking immensely. Still, I engage even a well-rehearsed spécialité de la maison with nothing short of grim determination. I cook for children, so in my kitchen complete failure is always a possible outcome. Living with this truth is a requirement of the job. Meal-to-meal, my work is to minimize the variables, learn from experience, and keep on cooking.

You know, the journey not the destination. That load.

The one stark exception to this practiced pragmatism is cooking with a wok. Just like everybody else who has aspired to, just once, cook General Tso's Chicken like they do it in town, I've fired up that meticulously seasoned wok, committed to getting it so basaltically hot that this time the dish will cook properly. And like all of us in General Tso's army, I've been buoyed by the sight of diced ginger and garlic dancing in crackling peanut oil. And like all the other good soldiers, I've stared slack-faced as the dazzling oil sulks and withers under the burden of chopped chicken. Like you, I've stood my ground, stirring ferociously, seeking that secret hot spot and deliverance. I, too, have risked grievous bodily harm, not to mention a nightmare clean-up, holding the wok vertical on the fire to engaged its unexploited regions. And, like us all, time and again, I have delivered dinner to the table muttering shy apologies and polite regrets, explaining that the last time I cooked this dish it wasn't "as mushy as this."

I know that a wok is not a useful tool in a home kitchen. I know that, while all off-the-rack stovetops can get a wok to the required 420 degrees, very few, if any, can deliver the BTUs necessary to keep the wok blistering when even the modest requirements of a serves-four hit that wafer thin surface.

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I've tried every work-around, and not a single one has ever been successful: No. More oil does not help. It only makes an obscene soup of an aspiring stir-fry. And while putting any meat you're going to cook in the freezer for 30 minutes really does make it much easier to cut into extremely thin slices, those pieces still bring the wok temperature down nearly 200 degrees. Once down, a wok only recovers 50 degrees or so.

Still I persist. Still I fail.

Until yesterday. Yesterday I put the wok aside. I did this because out here on the beach, in Southern California, nobody is watching. Back home in Brooklyn, I would not have dared. What if someone had rung the doorbell? The shame would be too much to bear.

Like the striving, wide-eyed human tide that washed out West before me, yesterday I was born anew. Yesterday I used a 17-inch cast iron skillet to cook Chinese food.

I did not make General Tso's Chicken. My 10-year-old daughter, Heath, would never eat it. She shuns any food not whiter than herself, and sauce? Forget about it. So I made velvet chicken and broccoli.

Breaking with thousands of years of Chinese foodways is one thing, overthrowing the tyranny of white food something else entirely. Still, I had it in me to resist. I wouldn't capitulate entirely; can't traipse into the dining room proffering buttered spaghettini (well, not every night). If I have to make white food then it will at least be tasty.

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Am I haunted by the futility of this effort? Absolutely. But at the dinner table last night, when it was my turn at Rose & Thorn, I described my triumph over the wok. I explained how, because of its superior conductivity and because more surface area is exposed directly to the flame, the cast-iron skillet holds the heat that a wok will not. I assured both children that, with a little extra attention assembling the mise en place, and a robust effort at the stove, I had drawn much closer to realizing my Chinese culinary ambitions.

While I prattled on, Heath grinned appreciatively. More important, she did so while her chopsticks moved continuously back and forth between bowl and maw. She was shoveling. When I paused, speechless, she looked around the table, suddenly self-conscious, but immediately resumed eating.

"Dad! This is great," she said through a mouthful of velvet chicken and broccoli. "You know, I'd eat this for breakfast if you made it."

Velvet Chicken with Broccoli
Serves 4

1 head broccoli, cut into small florets
2 tsp. cornstarch
4½ Tbsp. vegetable oil
1 egg white
1 lb. boneless, skinless chicken breast, sliced thinly crosswise
4 scallions, finely chopped
3 Tbsp. ginger, chopped
Kosher salt and freshly ground black pepper
2 tsp. sugar
¼ cup dry sherry
¾ cup low-sodium chicken stock

In a medium saucepan, bring 4 cups lightly salted water to a boil. Add broccoli florets and simmer until tender, about 4 minutes. Remove from pot and shock them in an ice bath.

Whisk cornstarch, ½ Tbsp. oil and egg white in a medium mixing bowl. Toss chicken to coat.

Meanwhile, heat remaining oil in a large skillet over high heat. Add scallion and ginger, season with salt and pepper, and cook, stirring constantly, until fragrant but not browned, about 30 seconds. Add chicken and juices. Cook, stirring often, until chicken turns opaque.

Add sherry and stir to incorporate. Then add chicken broth until sauce thickens about 2 or 3 minutes. Gently fold in broccoli florets until evenly covered by sauce.

Serve with steamed white rice.

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