The description at Outdoor Stir Fry is probably the best one I've seen: "Wok Hei [...] can be caused by high heat cooking, and it is enhanced if you catch some flames inside the wok [when] tossing your ingredients. Too little flame, and the flavor can taste flat; too much flame and the flavor will be overwhelmingly sooty. Some dishes, like stir-fried greens benefit from one or two small bursts of flame." That said, I'm just learning how to do it and am certainly no authority on the subject. As good as the Culinarian is, it's no 150k BTU dedicated wok burner, so I had to cheat a bit by throwing in a very small amount of water. I think if you're on a super high heat wok burner, then it's able to extract enough moisture from the food without having to add additional water. As their article states, this creates a flammable oil/water vapor which results in small bursts of flame. Then again, the Culinarian might be plenty hot and I could just be doing it wrong, but I plan on continuing to practice. I've been watching tons of wok cooking videos on YouTube and the videos from "chefbalcer" in particular are what I would like to mimic.

Sayde, I just purchased the 48" range VGSC I believe (gas ovens) with 4 burners and the center wok. I can't WAIT! I believe all of the ranges and range tops with the wok have been discontinued by Viking. I got a floor model at a great discount. This is my second 48" Viking range. Sadly, the other one stayed with our last house. I know that the new ranges have different ignitors, but I didn't have an issue with the ignitors on my last range. My old range (2004 model) had the open burners and the 24" griddle in the middle. I would do the open burners again, but this floor model with the wok and sealed burners was about $3k less than I would've paid for an open burner configuration (and I'll take the $3k). I don't think I'll be up and cooking for at least three weeks unfortunately. I'll post my review once I've cooked on it. It'll be interesting to see how it compares to my 50000 btu outdoor wok I've been cooking on(which is essentially an outdoor turkey fryer burner modified to hold a wok). Best of luck finding the model you're looking for. Viking does make a nice range =] Greencrazed

asolo, Sounds like you have experienced wok soup, as have I. The wok cooking with this unit is totally different. It is so hot, I can't believe the power. That is a luxury in wok-ing, as you know. I am smitten with it, and this after only fixing two meals in that number of days. The one I purchased has the 18" carbon steel wok, so I believe that is the smaller version. I used a 14' wok on my range, so that was my frame of reference. The 18 is huge, but I think they offer a 22, which you could feed a pile of folks with. Outdoor wok cooking is a natural. Wok cooking produces so much smoke and concentrated aromas that doing it outdoors just makes sense. Kind of like frying fish. P.S. I was sort of shocked to learn that my large burner on my modern smooth cooktop range can only manage about 12,000 BTUs. No wonder I was getting wok soup, or at least not the results I had hoped for. This outdoor burner, with 65,000 BTUs at hand, did the trick for me!

For stir-frying, burner shape is as important or even more important than burner power. I test drove the Miele and Dacor cooktops as well as the BlueStar rangetop we chose. (Not an apples to apples test but at first I was hesitant to give up the space to a rangetop - then when I found out how much better the BlueStar performed for stir frying I changed my mind.) The 15K BTU burners on our Bluestar that are about the same power as the Miele and Dacor burners stir fry much better because they are much more efficient at delivering heat to the bottom of the wok and they do it very evenly. The 22K BTU burner on our BlueStar is even better. When I tested the Dacor and Miele with a chicken stir fry, I put in half the chicken at a time to sear to not overload it and it still wasn't a perfect sear. When I tested the BlueStar, it was a hot day and my DH had packed the ice chest so carefully that the chicken was mostly frozen when I took it out to start cooking. But if I was going to sacrifice my drawer to the rangetop it better be good so I put in all the chicken at once and the BlueStar immediately had it sizzling and seared perfectly. The food really tasted different cooked on the BlueStar. I highly recommend calling around the appliance stores to see if you can find one with the types of burner you are considering hooked up so you can try a stir fry recipe on the burner. I took the same wok and recipe ingredients to each cooktop/rangetop I was considering and learned a lot by doing that. If Bluestar offered a single burner version of their rangetop, that is what I would recommend to you. If you don't have a chance to do that, what you want to look for is a burner that has a shape to deliver heat efficiently and evenly to the bottom of a wok. An example of a bad type of shape is the sealed burner like on the Dacor and Miele cooktops. These have a flat circular top and flame comes out of the side of the circle. The higher you turn the burner up, the more the flame shoots out to the side; no flame goes up in the center of the burner. An example of a type that works really well for a wok is the BlueStar burner shape where the flame comes straight up out of the burner. The burner shape has a circle of flame at the center of the burner and 8 star rays of flame coming out from that circle. The center grate comes off the burner so that the wok sits right down into the flame and heat is delivered to the whole bottom of the wok. This is very similar to the wok arrangements I saw in China. A friend has the DCS wok burner and that does a very good job. We have the Miele oven. I'm very happy with its cooking performance but I find its controller kind of annoying at times. Its heating is very stable and accurate. It cooks bread well. Things I don't like: Maximum timer setting is 59 minutes and 59 seconds. I'd gladly give up the seconds to have a timer that times longer than an hour. If you put in the time and then forget to hit the button that starts the timer, it waits a bit and then cancels the timer. Too many modes - for example they have a proofing mode that only allows two temps (both higher than I would usually want to proof at) and a defrost mode with a wide range of temps (which is what I use for proofing because I can set it to 80 or 90 degrees). One ends up having to learn little tricks like which baking mode lets you set the temp up to 550 degrees (most of the modes stop at 500). If the BlueStar ovens had been available when we were choosing, I'd have been very tempted to choose them. I'm short and the side opening door would be easier for me. The one downside is that they aren't self-cleaning and I'm rather addicted to not having to clean my oven. How is your breaker box occupancy? Ours is full. If you want to add that other oven at a later date, will you have a 220 V breaker spot open? That might be one reason to choose between gas and electric ovens.