I have an iron wok, which is pretty heavy, and I store it in the garage simply because I have no room for it in my kitchen, and it has a large aluminum lid. It also came with a ring for the range, but my new range came with a wok adapter that works much better and keeps the wok centered on the burner. Most often, I use it for fried rice that I make with mushrooms, chilies, garlic, and other vegetables that I may have, plus eggs scrambled in at the end.

Here's the recipe for Pad Thai that I use:

Chicken Pad Thai Fried Noodles

This recipe is a
combination of several recipes that I found, and the flavor seems to be
authentic, mainly because of the sauce.

8 oz. dried rice noodles
12 oz. chicken meat (or shrimp)
3 tbsp corn starch (or flour)
1/8 tsp cayenne (optional)
3 tbsp grape seed oil or peanut oil, approx.
4 cloves garlic, thinly sliced or chopped
1 small bunch bok choy, leaves reserved separately (or one cup bean sprouts)
1/3 cup Thai preserved cabbage, rinsed and drained – press out all excess
moisture
2-3 Serrano peppers, thinly sliced, seeds removed, if desired
3 oz. Savory baked tofu or tempeh, sliced 1/8” thick and cut into 1/2” x 1/4”
pieces
2 tbsp dried shrimp, ground
2 eggs, lightly beaten with
2 tsp soy sauce
4-5 green onions, thinly sliced, including green parts
1/4 cup chopped basil

Sauce:
2 tbsp tamarind paste
1/4 cup water
1 tsp granulated sugar
1 tbsp dark soy sauce
2-1/2 tbsp Thai fish sauce
2 tablespoons fresh lime juice
1 tablespoon rice vinegar
2 tbsp Thai curry paste or 1 tbsp Chinese chili paste*
1/4 cup chopped cilantro

For Garnish:
chopped cilantro
coarsely chopped dry roasted unsalted peanuts (optional – I serve these on the
side)

Place the rice noodles in a large bowl, cover them with cold water, and
allow them to soak for about one hour.
After they have soaked, drain them well and dry with a clean dish towel
or paper towels. Keep them covered
until you are ready to fry them. I
dried them in a salad spinner that I lined with paper towels, and them I left
them in the spinner, covered, until I was ready to use them.

While the noodles are soaking, make the sauce. Dissolve the tamarind paste in water, using a pestle or other
blunt object (such as wooden stomper for a meat grinder) and then strain
through a coarse strainer or run through a food mill. Scrap the softened paste off the bottom of the strainer/mill, and
put into a pyrex measuring cup or small bowl.
Add the sugar, 1 tbsp soy sauce, fish sauce, lime juice, rice vinegar,
curry paste (or chili paste), and cilantro and stir to combine. At this point you can taste it for seasoning
and add a bit more soy sauce if you think it needs it. Set aside.

Cut the chicken into small, bite-sized pieces. Combine the cayenne with the cornstarch, and dredge the chicken
pieces in the mixture.

Heat 1 tbsp of the oil in a wok. Stir-fry the garlic for about one minute,
and add the chicken pieces, one at a time.
Stir with very long stir-fry chop sticks. When the chicken is done remove and set aside. Leave whatever oil remains in the wok.

Make sure the rest of the ingredients have been sliced/chopped and are lined
up in order of addition. Remove the
green part of the bok choy and reserve it chopped with the green onions. In order add the

Bok choy (white part only)
preserved cabbage, rinsed and drained
Serrano peppers
baked tofu or tempeh
dried shrimp
drained rice noodles

Stirring with the long chopsticks to distribute evenly. You may need to add the extra oil as you go
along. After the noodles have been
brought up to temperature (about 3-4 minutes or so), add the sauce, stir to
combine, and push the entire mixture to one side of the wok with a wooden
spoon. Add the egg/soy sauce mixture to
make scrambled eggs in the bottom of the wok.
When the eggs are soft set, stir them into the rest of the mixture,
using the chop sticks.

Lastly, add the green onions and bok choy greens, fry for about one minute
more, and then add the basil and reserved chicken. Serve
with garnishes on the side or on top. I
omit the peanuts for myself, and I serve the peanuts in a small dish at the
table for others to add as they like.

*If you use Chinese chili paste, you may want to omit the Serrano
peppers. The Thai curry paste that I
use (Prik Kaeng) is not very hot, and is made from chili extract, lemon grass,
garlic, onion, and shrimp paste.

Serves
4

A wok is wide, with a round bottom curving smoothly to sloping sides, made of thin material, usually steel but sometimes thin iron, that heats up quickly. It is somewhat versatile and can be used for boiling, steaming, and other general cooking, but is ideally suited for quickly frying, with high heat and some oil, food that has been cut into small pieces, and is tumbled and flipped with a spatula during the cooking so that all sides get browned from direct contact with the hot surface. Which pretty much describes the "stir-fry" process.

To stir-fry properly, you need high heat. If the burner is not hot, or if too much food is being cooked at once, the wok cools down and the food doesn't brown. Meat turns gray and soggy. But you don't need a very powerful burner; if you have a lower power burner, you can cook your food on maximum heat in small batches.

Because the cooking time is short, food usually needs to be cut up and spiced, marinated, or flavored in advance. There isn't the time for flavors to develop slowly in the pot. There also isn't time for connective tissue in meat, or fibrous parts of plants, to break down during cooking. And the heat won't have time to penetrate deeply. You'll want to avoid tough, gristly, or very fatty cuts of meat, and large pieces of meat. Dense vegetables like rutabaga or brocolli stems needs to be pre-cooked, or sliced thin for cooking.

I don't know of a good recipe book, although I'm sure there are some.

If you'd like to have a starter recipe to try out, here is one that is very basic and somewhat Asian:

- Buy 2-3 lb boneless chicken thighs, trim off fat, cut into 1" cubes.

- Mix marinade of 1/2 c soy sauce, 1 c sake or Chinese cooking wine, 1/4 c rice vinegar, 1 tsp minced ginger, 1 tsp minced garlic, 1 tbsp minced onion, 1/2 tsp black pepper, a pinch of red pepper flakes, 1 tsp sesame oil, 1/2 c chopped green onion, 1/2 tbsp corn starch. It isn't necessary to be precise in these measurements.

- Marinate chicken for at least 1 hour, preferably a few hours.

- Remove and drain chicken, save marinade.

- Pre-heat empty wok on high heat. Add 1 tsp cooking oil, turn wok so oil coats the whole cooking surface, keep heating until oil just starts to smoke. Add 1 cup of the marinated chicken pieces, use spatula to turn and mix chicken as it is cooking, for about 2 minutes. Chicken should get lightly browned, should not get gray or soggy. Remove chicken using a slotted spoon or a mesh wire spider. Test a piece for doneness. Let wok heat up, add 1/2 tsp oil, repeat with next batch of chicken, etc.

- Pour marinade into wok, after all the chicken has been cooked and removed. Reduce heat to medium. Boil marinade until it thickens to a sauce consistency. Add all the chicken back to wok, stir to coat with the sauce, remove to serving bowl.

So that is an example of basic stir fry in a wok. You could also stir fry vegetables. Hard veg like carrots should be thinly sliced or cut into matchsticks. Other veg should be in small pieces, like sliced mushrooms, cut corn, etc. You'd cook those in batches, after the chicken, removing each batch before adding the next.

We have a 45 yr old steel wok. That is the traditional wok and isn't near as heavy as Lars wok also won't crack/break as a cast iron wok could do. The Wok Shop has wonderful items and is extremely reliable. We have made purchases from them for others that envied our wok and they are always happy with the product. Here are a couple pics. DH uses our wok almost every night. We have some great patina going on.

Delf's book is the best...The Good Food of Szechwan. http://www.amazon.com/Good-Food-Szechwan-Down-Earth/dp/0870112317

It is amazing and we have had it since it came out in 1974. Also Fuschia Dunlop's book is fantastic as is anything she writes. http://www.amazon.com/Land-Plenty-Treasury-Authentic-Sichuan/dp/0393051773

http://wokshop.com/

We used to. One of the first thing i mastered in college. Good meals full of veggies and cheap since we all chipped in.

Now it is maybe once or twice a year. I have a well seasoned steel wok and a heavy cast iron one. Usually when i bring home a big bag of baby bok choy we make our favorite simple toasted peanuts, then ginger, garlic, thin sliced skirt steak, splash of soy and lemon, then add a cooked grain and the bok choy, toss and lid on to steam briefly....etc.

A note- it can be a bit oily as enough oil is needed for most wok cooking. And hot high heat gets tricky. Or you are just steaming...wok cooking is usually high heat, then steam. A bit of a combination.

You actually don't need a wok to stir-fry. Woks have a curved cooking area to hot-sear a larger amount of food for say 4 people. (or leftovers) but we don't care much anymore for the fried rice leftovers.

You can make many of the dishes with pans you have.

Which wok?

Carbon steel or thin cast iron. Nothing shiny (impossible to keep clean), nothing non-stick (high heat destroys those coatings). Woks tend to get black and seasoned after a while, just go with it.

You don't really need or want "even heat distribution" with a wok, as you do with a saucepan or skillet. You are moving the food around, from the hot oil in the center to the cooler dryer sides. Sometimes you'll park pieces that are cooked enough on the sides, while pushing the less cooked pieces to the center.

A long handle, ideally with a loop "helper" handle on the other side, is a bit more convenient than two loop handles, because you don't need a hot pad to hold the handle.

A round bottom wok requires a wok ring that will sit securely on your burner, or a burner with a special grate. Rings are cheap and work okay. Some woks have flat bottoms to work on a normal grate, these are okay if the flat bottom is not too large and curves smoothly into the sloping sides, without a sharp angle.

Larger is better. At least 14". Too small, and stuff tends to fall out as you cook.

I wouldn't spend more than $40, there's no need to. And you can get a good wok for well less. Something like http://wokshop.stores.yahoo.net/castwokwsiha.html would be very nice. If there is an Asian grocery near you, they probably have something similar.

You don't need a special spatula or spider, and any old lid will work.

Lars, I really want to love tempeh, but can't. I've tried the TJ, Westsoy and Whole Foods varieties and found them extremely bitter. What brand do you use and how do you prepare to get rid of it?

I have a carbon steel wok that my sister purchased at World Market. It was not expensive at all. If I was purchasing for myself, I would have purchased from the wok shop that trailrunner references, primarily because I want a lid and would want to make sure it fits. Mine looks like this one at Sur La Table. I like the wood handles because at the fast pace of stir-frying there is a very good chance I would grab a hot handle and burn myself. I have enjoyed the cookbooks by Grace Young, like Stir Frying to the Sky's Edge and I think her other one is Breath of a Wok.

Some things I have learned in the past year of having the wok:

1. Turn the fans on and open a window, at least a crack. I have a pretty good Vent-A-Hood but at that high of a temperature, it is good to be proactive.

2. After washing, dry it right away. The carbon steel will start to rust if this is skipped.

3. Be careful when adding stuff to the hot oil at first, because if there is too much oil and you slide the food in too fast, burns are likely.

One of these days, I really should start watching videos of how others stir-fry so I can pick up more pointers but in the meantime, I love having the wok even as I just kind of make it up as I go. Getting dinner on the table quickly is so much easier with the wok that it is worth mastering.

I have an old carbon-steel wok that is now very well-seasoned after hundreds of stir-fries. I prefer carbon steel for the reasons John Liu outlined.

Cast iron can get quite hot, but it does not allow the fast temperature modulation you really need for wok cookery. Electric woks just don't get hot enough -- unless you spend far more for one than you would for a stovetop wok. Non-stick is a no-no, as mentioned.

But keep in mind that most kitchens outside of those grand ones mentioned in the Kitchen forum here don't have stoves with enough oomph to really heat a wok to the right temperature. You'll likely want to maximize whatever heat you've got with the proper wok.

As for books, my wok came with a little user guide/cookbook. It was a good start so I could figure out what kinds of foods I wanted to cook. I would suggest looking in your local library. Thumb through a few wok cookbooks and find one that has recipes you'd like to cook and instructions you're confident you can follow.

Unless you have a blast furnace as your stove, it is basically hopeless to do a real stir frying. Most of time you are really ending up making soup..

However, by applying the physics of thermal dynamics, you may achieve a good amount of "Wok Hey" "The characteristic flavor is due to the the Maillard reactions and the charring of the ingredients"

Here is what I do:

1. Fire up two frying pans with oil to smoking hot.

2. with your first batch of ingredients, microwave to very hot, but not cooked. Then stir fry in one of the hot pans. Because the ingredients are very hot, they will not cool the pan down very much.

3. After you got some degree of frying and the pan is now getting colder, immediately pour the ingredients into the second smoking hot pan. Now you are getting some serious "Wok Hei".

dcarch

Good tips, dcarch, esp. with the 2 hot pans. I need to remember to try that next time I attempt stir fry.

I have a big carbon steel wok that I found at rummage...one long handle and a helper handle. I like that handle configuration vs the two small loop handles.

Also have a smaller & thicker aluminum wok that I never use so it will be going into the cull pile. Too small and I much prefer the heat responsiveness of the carbon steel one.

When I need a lid for the wok, I use a flat cookie sheet. The cookie sheet is always at hand because I have myriad daily uses for it. A big wok lid would be difficult to store as I nest other cooking implements in the wok.

I wonder if my wok is carbon steel instead of iron. The outer surface has concentric ridges, and magnets will stick to it, but then my carbon steel knifes also stick to magnets. I have a feeling that it really is steel because I seem to remember that it was shiny when I bought it decades ago. I use it for making popcorn more than anything else, but it will make a huge batch of popcorn, and all of it pops. However, I do not make popcorn as often as I used to. My wok has one long handle and a small helper handle, both in maple. I remember that the Frugal Gourmet used to use his with Chinese steamer baskets, which he would stack on top of the wok. I never bought any of those because I would find them difficult to clean, and I have other steamer implements that I prefer.

Ask and you shall receive. Especially at gardenweb. What a wonderful mixture of posts - recipes, instructions, thoughts etc. Thanks very much to one and all in helping us get started.

We have the large steamer baskets and use them frequently to steam dumplings . We don't have to clean anything due to using a small round of parchment underneath each item. The steam circulates just fine. We don't use them for anything other than this so I suppose if one were to use them for fish etc it could get messy ! Hope you will post back pink and let us all see what you have purchased ! Good Luck. c

you can also do some smoking with a wok.

dcarch

Nannygoat, I do not buy the tempeh - my brother does, and so I do not know what brand it is. I think he gets it at Trader Joe's, as he frequently shops there at lunch, as it is walking distance from Sony. I'm not crazy about tempeh either, but it is okay when there are a lot of other ingredients in a dish, as in the Pad Thai. Adding Thai curry paste and tamarind paste helps. I have also bought it at a Japanese market as well as an Indonesian market, which is very close to us. They have a restaurant across the street from the market, but we more often just go to the market. It's very close to Sony also.

Thanks Lars-it seems it's one of those products that needs a good disguise!

Tempeh is a little like very stinky french cheese - a definite acquired taste. I don't hate like I did as a child but it is an assertive presence in any dish.

I would love to acquire it, but all my attempts have been futile. Yesterday, I slathered it with BBQ sauce but it could not overcome the funk:(

And I love strong flavored veggies (Brussel sprouts, broccoli) so I don't know why I have such an aversion to tempeh.

The problem with "heating up" food in the microwave before putting it in the wok is that the microwave cooks from the inside out....and you have mushy food before you get the char.
I have a gas stove....and I heat the wok blazing not and cook just a little food at a time. I use 2 woks for more food.

"The problem with "heating up" food in the microwave before putting it in the wok is that the microwave cooks from the inside out....and you have mushy food before you get the char.----"

Actually, that is a myth that has been debunked for a while. Microwave does not cook from the inside out. Microwave is used for warming up food all the time.

Also, charring is not what sir frying tries to achieve. Only quick and hot enough to accomplish caramelization and maillard reaction before interior of food is overcooked, shrunk and before everything becomes watery.

dcarch

I made a big batch of rice with broccoli a few days ago and stir fried the leftovers in my wok. I agree with Linda that you should not microwave the leftovers before stir frying them - I did MW the first batch a couple of days ago, but yesterday I did not, and they were much better. Since I have an iron grate that came with my stove for woks, it is easy for me to leave the wok on the stove for a couple of days. The grate holds the wok firmly in place.

For the broccoli rice, I cooked the rice in a pressure cooker with the stems of the broccoli sliced very thinly, along with a bit of onion and a couple of chile de árbol, but I only cooked this for 3 minutes at full pressure. When the pressure went down, I added the florets, which I stirred in, and cooked that for one minute at 212° in the PC, and let the pan cool down before serving. I cooked several chicken thighs in the toaster oven to have with the rice, and then I used the leftover chicken with the broccoli rice for a stir fry a couple of days later.

The batch I made last night started with broccoli rice in the wok, and then I added leftover chopped chicken, green onion, 2 eggs, and some chopped cashews. At the end, I seasoned it with mushroom soy sauce and toasted sesame oil. I preheated the wok on the largest burner at the lowest heat, and that was plenty hot. When I added the rice, I increased the heat.

I use this steel wok spatula, which I consider essential for wok cooking.

My hero for anything Chinese is Ken Hom. He lives in America, no?

http://kenhom.com/

I don't know Ken Hom, but his recipes do look good.

I very seldom go to Chinese restaurants (the best ones are in suburbs very far from me), and I have not been using my Chinese cookbooks very much. I have Sichuan peppercorns in inventory, but I have not been using them.

Chinese cuisine is very low on my list of favorites, possibly because I lived in San Francisco for so long, which has very many bad Cantonese style restaurants, many of which cater to tourists rather than residents.

Anyway, it is so easy to cook Chinese food that I prefer to make it myself, and I do like using my wok, since I can make meals very quickly in it, but my favorites are Thai instead of Chinese.

I have a non-stick flat bottom wok in Cathedral City (since our Samsung stove did not come with a wok grate), and while I like this pan for some recipes, it really does not equal the round bottom wok I have here in L.A.

I have a copy of The Chinese Take Out Cookbook by Diane Kuan that I've made a couple dozen recipes from. It has very detailed cooking instructions that make it hard to screw up which is what I need. I usually do all the prep work in the morning so when it's time to eat it only takes about 15 minutes to cook.

I have 2 woks and sometimes use both for a meal if I am feeding more than just the 2 of us.

I hadn’t heard of microwaving before wok, and don’t think I’d do it. Food to be wok cooked is cut into small pieces, tenderized if needed, heat penetrates quickly, no need to microwave.

Cooking everything in batches, one food at a time, then combining for a final meld cook, is my usual process. Some stuff needs more oil, because of it’s shape; other stuff needs less oil and more heat; occasionally stuff wants to be cooked in oil then have a bit of water poured into the hot wok and covered to be steam finished. Batch cooking lets you give each food its favorite treatment.

I haven’t been doing much wok cooking, since I took out the microwave-hood. It was a terrible hood, but having no vent hood at all was worse.

Our new vent hood is finally working! This is the 48” wide, 35” (appx) deep commercial hood with side panels down to the counter. I put a commercial sideblast fan on the outside of the house and used 10” x 10” duct. According to my calculations - and more importantly the fan/hood company’s calculations - I should be pulling at least 1,000 cubic feet per minute. My whole kitchen is only about 3,000 cubic feet.

Basically, nothing escapes the hood. I experimented with deliberately generating a huge roiling cloud of oily steam (pour cold water into a pan of very hot oil), with incense sticks held two feet away from the hood at head level, etc. Nothing escapes.

The only problem is I have to crack a window in the kitchen, or my fireplace will draft in reverse :-) One of these days I will install makeup air. For now, it’s a handy way to air out the house. My whole house, from basement to attic, is maybe 35,000 cubic feet. When it is stuffy or stale, I just turn on the vent hood for an hour.

Anyway, back to wok cooking - I’ll be able to resume doing it now that I won’t smell up the house!

I do not have a great hood vent in L.A. but only occasionally need one. Wok cooking is one of those times, and I have to close bedroom doors so that the smoke alarms won't go off. I have a large window near the stove, which is good, and I also have a door to the outside in the kitchen, which has a window that is easy to open. The window above the sink is difficult to open, partly because the counter with the sink is in the way.

I have a better hood in Cathedral City, which is nice because the window in the kitchen does not open. Unfortunately also the kitchen is open to the dining room, which is open to the living room, and I really hate not being able to close the kitchen off, but at least the kitchen is not visible from the living room. In L.A. there are two open doorways in the kitchen, one of which used to have a swinging door when the house was built in 1950, and another next to it that is open to the hallway. I wish these doorways had pocket doors so that I could contain smells and noise in the kitchen like I could with my kitchen in Venice, but then that kitchen was really too small and cramped. I'm glad that I do not have a kitchen that is open to a living room, but then I would never have bought a house that had that kind of floor plan.

I agree, ”open kitchens” are the worst! I don’t even like kitchens that are open to the dining room. Kitchens are loud, messy, hot, smelly, smoky - except mine now :-) - places and should be walled off from dining. When SWMBO entertains her friends, the last thing they want to see is me spilling stuff, liberally interpreting the 3 second rule, and resignedly drinking the cooking wine.

Fun thread to revive, I enjoy this :)

Trailrunner - I think we have your same wok, and have had 'The Good Food of Szechwan' forever (2nd printing 1980), it was my first intro to cooking chinese - we have made the chicken Gong-bao Ji-ding on page 45 over and over again and now my son has perfected it. Your pictures are great, very much our style.

Lars, I ordered a wok spatula like you show for my husband for Christmas, but it never arrived so now I am reminded to re-order from a more reliable shipper (shipper refused to mail to Alaska) thank you.

I have visions of you disappearing up your cooker hood!

"the last thing they want to see is me spilling stuff, liberally interpreting the 3 second rule, and resignedly drinking the cooking wine."

Half of why I come here is to read you!

Well my living/cooking space is one room so people have to witness me doing all of the above LOL

Islay, my hood will not quite inhale a person, alas :-)

If it could do that, I'd decorate it with sharks' teeth and name it "Jaws". As it is, we just refer to it as the Massive Hood.

I was wondering how to measure the actual airflow, to compare against calculated airflow. I think I can take a video of smoke beiong pulled into the baffles (e.g. incense stick), time how long it takes for the smoke to travel 1 foot, and then measure the baffle area to compute the airflow. Project for tonight.

SWMBO was quite angry about the Massive Hood project for its entire duration. First for what it was going to cost, then for how long it took, then for how much it actually cost. Now she begrudgingly likes it, but still complains about its appearance. But that part's not finished, protest I. We're not going to live long enough for you to finish this, retorts she.

FOAS, the cooking wine part is true.

We took all the booze and liquor out of the house a few months ago.

DS is wrestling with mental health issues (depression, maybe other) and had to leave school and move back home for a couple of terms. He told us that at school he'd started drinking to try to sleep, and wanted to stop, so we became a "dry house".

People can bring wine over for dinner, that's not a problem, but otherwise the imbibing options here are various moldly cooking wines - sherry, rice wine, sake, and a few bottles of indifferent red wine stashed in the garage for cooking needs.

Moving the cases and cases of alcohol (and, for related reasons, all the firearms) from the house to my office storage was quite a project. It made me think about how much I myself might or might not drink.

So I've been a one-beer-at-the-pub-every-couple-of-weeks type of person (plus the resigned swigs of cooking sake) all winter, and I don't mind it at all.

The rest of it is true too :-)

Firearms? Have you been hunting for your food? One of the reasons I left Texas was the proliferation of guns. I cannot imagine ever owning one, but I'm good with a bow and arrow. I saw on CBS news that guns are the most effective method for suicide, and so I understand that someone who suffers from depression should not have access. I hope your son get professional help - there might be medications that could help. I personally think that depression is in part caused by chemical imbalances, and diet can possibly be part of the reason. For me, sugar could trigger what appeared to be manic depressive episodes.

Trailrunner, have you tried rotating your phone when taking photos, or does it automatically convert them to portrait orientation?

I rotated this photo for you because it was difficult for me to identify the food in the portrait orientation. Are the red bits tomato? At first, I thought they were red bell pepper, until I checked your second photo. I've never cooked tomatoes in a wok, and so that is an interesting variation for me. I really like the large shadow of the wok in the first photo, and I love the outdoor wok setup! Now I want one of those.

@John Liu - I'm sorry to hear about your son's struggles. I have little doubt that he's with the most supportive and understanding parents he could hope for. I wish him the best.

Not a hunter, alas, and I release my trout, so doubly incapable of living off the land. I do target shooting, the type called “bullseye”. It is kind of an American version of some International (ISSF) or Olympic pistol events.

My favorite black vinegar is Rinkosan Kurosu, from Japan. I buy it at one of the Japanese markets close to me. In L.A., instead of "Asian" markets, we have more specialized markets, including Japanese, Korean, Thai, Indonesian, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc., and I go to different ethnic neighborhoods for these. The largest are the Korean and Japanese. Vietnamese and Chinese markets are mostly in the suburbs - Westminster and Monterey Park, but there is a 99 Ranch Market (Chinese) not too far from me. The Japanese markets are my favorites and are also the closest to me.

I've tried some Chinese black vinegars, but they did not appeal to me.

@Lars/J. Robert Scott You've been consistent about that Japanese brand for a long time. Seems to be sold out at several places so perhaps you're not alone. Although it's back ordered, AMZ let me buy some. Hope it has as long of s shelf life as regular vinegar, as it's s pretty big bottle I'm getting!

@User - I'd be interested in a picture of "the best" when you get it, if you remember and can. Thanks!