hey fishy

I agree with all that's been said so far. I'm with Razor regarding gas - I have a wok burner in the middle of my cooker and it does the job for me though I do look upon Jerry's customised approach with fascination. If you want high heat go for it. My main point is to avoid believing that it's vital. I would say cooking technique is more important and with high heat the margin for error time wise is tighter - burning spices becomes much easier.

Hi Fishy,

I've been reflecting on my comments with regards to high heat and in fairness, I've never cooked on anything anywhere near 7kw, so for me to totally dismiss it was wrong.

However, just cooking on my humble domestic gas hob gives me fantastic result so I've never really felt the need to go higher.

I cooked a madras tonight for my supper, and with this thread in mind, I carefully observed the activity going on in the pan.  There was a furious amount of bubbling happening, easily as much as I'd seen previously on you tube links or the East web cam.  So, I'm quite satisfied with the output from my hob but I know Jerry feels that his 7kw burner gives him better results.  Jerry without doubt, puts a hell of a lot of effort into his cooking and his experiments are of so much value to the forum.  I would think it very prudent to take his advise, it's just that I've never be fortunate enough to make the comparison between domestic output levels to professional output levels.

Ray

Hi

I know I've raised this before on other posts. Very early BIR's were no more than a front room of a house and the food cooked on a domestic stove. So catering equipment really came into it when formal business were established, a domestic cooker would struggle to take the knocks of a buys kitchen. Yet was fine when only a few needed to be done.

Regards

I've got a 24mm aluminium pan which cost only GBP3.99 from Lidl a few weeks ago. It seems good quality, with a 3mm base, so heat spread and everything should be perfect - much better than steel.

Like most modern pans, it came with a non-stick coating. Rather than have it come off in use - especially if I want to use a metal spoon for theatrics - I decided to remove the non stick coating. It took me about 30 mins of scraping and sanding - I would have spent longer than that looking for a shop which sold catering versions (at a higher price).

Here are images, before and after:

Thanks Mick and George, lol, there I go ordering the wrong size twice!

Oh well the 26 cm one is only a tenner. They are really solid pans with nice thick aluminium.

Cheers,

Paul