Happy days with Ching’s Lotus Wok

By : Vaishali Sengupta | 7 Comments | On : February 23, 2016 | Category : Events, Products, Reviews

A few days ago, I celebrated the Chinese New Year in style with JML at the Cookery School. JML had a really exciting event to launch the Lotus Wok. The lovely Ching He Huan was there to talk about the Wok and demonstrate some fab Chinese dishes.

This incredibly versatile wok is the result of the hard work put in by Ching He Huan, the celebrated chef. In pursuit of the perfect wok, she has spent a lot of time and effort in designing the perfect wok to give the same results that are achieved by woks found in professional Chinese cooking.

The event was fun. The lovely Ching cooked food in seconds on a hot wok, throwing in things like edamame beans, broccoli, with ginger, garlic and fiery hot chillies– the Holy Trinity of Chinese cooking, as she calls it.

She cooked some recipes from her new book- Eat Clean and demonstrated how healthy food can be delicious at the same time without the use of much oil or effort.

She cooked some chicken, fried rice and noodles and we got to taste her delicious cooking.

I know the photos are not exactly making you salivate, but it was hard to get a perfect food photo due to the red coloured lighting at the event. The food, as expected, was delicious! A dash of this, a handful of that, a toss of the wok and hey presto- Ching’s food in minutes.

But more about the Lotus wok.

Ching passionately told us why she calls it the Lotus Wok. Like the Lotus leaf stays in water but repels water, in the same fashion, the special nano-silica coating on the Lotus Wok, replicates the natural properties of a lotus leaf making it water-repellent and yet it allows oil, to permeate the surface and form a natural non stick coating on the wok as in traditional wok cooking.

Here she is demonstrating how hot the wok needs to get before you actually put anything in it.

When you cook at home, especially in nonstick cookware, food never tastes like the Chinese restaurant. The reason is that you cannot cook on high heat in non stick cookware, so the vegetables turn soft and mushy whereas when you eat proper Chinese food the vegetables are always crisp. The secret to crisp crunchy veg is a really hot wok. This is where the Lotus Wok is different from other non stick woks because it can be heated to high temperatures.

The lotus wok is a 5 piece set-

the wok itself,
a vented lid that is really useful in cooking,
chopsticks to help you cook and stir.
Spatula – for stirring
a steel plate for steaming- the most important thing in this wok set , I think is this plate, that helps you steam food as well, using the same wok. No need for any separate pots or pans. How cool is that? I am looking forward to steaming some sea bass covered with lemon slices and live oil, wrapped in aluminium foil. Steam broccoli, beans, fish- anything you fancy.
It also comes with a copy of Ching’s new book Eat Clean.

So after an afternoon of wokking with the lovely Ching, I returned home with my own Lotus Wok, happy for having met her and learned some neat tricks.

I look forward to some happy Wokking time in my kitchen with my JML Lotus Wok.

Eat clean, get wokking, but first head over to JML’s website and get your own Lotus Wok. It is absolutely superb quality, you’ll know when you touch it. And for everything it comes with, at under £50, I’d say it’s a steal.