Hell Yes!

It just so happens that my wok fits perfectly inside the green egg. I may never use it on my stove top again.

Yesterday I went to Super H Mart to restock my Asian pantry. I can't walk out of that store without wanting to cook some kind of Asian food so last night we had some friends over and played with the big green egg. A friend of mine recently gave me 2 wild pheasants which she did not have room for in her freezer so I decided to smoke-roast them as part of our dinner. About 15 hours prior to cooking them I put them in a sort of brine/marinade that consisted of soy sauce, Korean red pepper paste, and water. Before they went on the smoker, I dried them off and sprinkled them generously with Shichimi Togarashi (a spicy Japanese pepper mix), salt and sumac. I roasted these guys for about 2 hours at 220 degrees and brushed them with Hoisin during the last 20 minutes of cooking for a tasty little glaze affect. These birds rested on my counter while I finished the rest of the food.


Next it was time to take the Egg from slow and low, to very hot. This is a simple process. I just pulled out the cooking grate and the plate setter and opened the lid and vents. Once the coals got plenty of air the fire got really hot and I just dropped the wok right down in on top of the coals. It was really quite awesome because the handles of the wok suspended it perfectly over the heat source and still allowed plenty of airflow for the fire to breath. This has by far been the best wok cooking experience I have ever had. My wok is actually happier because of it as well! The wide, extra hot heat source of the egg crept up on all sides of the wok so it totally improved the seasoning that I have been working so hard to create inside this thing. Trying to properly season a real wok on a home stove is annoying and difficult. The small flame source requires me to constantly move to wok around in order to get heat on the entire thing. It takes forever to get even a little seasoning on the surface of the metal like this. On the Egg, however, there was plenty of heat all around the wok and I didn't have to move it once during my cooking process. This is really the only way I want to use my wok from now on.

At H Mart I picked up some shucked muscle meat, baby bok choy, sesame sprouts, baby broccoli, little half crabs, and various pastes, and seasonings. I also got 3 kinds of Kimchi. Wild garlic, green onion and the more common cabbage kind. All three were eaten with this dinner. The crabs, muscles and veggies were all stir fried in different combinations that Helge and I came up with on the fly as the wok was heating up.

Here are some pics of the various dishes being made.

Expect a lot more of this kind of cooking from now on. It was really cool.

... And NO, I do not work for Big Green Egg.