Bon Appétit joins chef Lucas Sin in Bangkok's Chinatown to try legendary fire wok (wok hei) stir fry. The explosion of flame and smoke isn’t just for show, but for incredible flavor through emulsification.
Director: Joe Pickard
Director of Photography: Nic Ko
Editor: Jared Hutchinson
Host: Lucas Sin
Producer: Ali Inglese
Line Producer: Jen McGinity
Production Manager: Janine Dispensa
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Assistant Camera: Walter Lai
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Ho
Production Assistant: Mag Shuiman
Researcher: Vivian Jao
Fact-Checker: Ryan Harrington
Translator: Chawadee Nualkhair
Post Production Supervisor: Andrea Farr
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Lauren Worona
Director: Joe Pickard
Director of Photography: Nic Ko
Editor: Jared Hutchinson
Host: Lucas Sin
Producer: Ali Inglese
Line Producer: Jen McGinity
Production Manager: Janine Dispensa
Production Coordinator: Elizabeth Hymes
Assistant Camera: Walter Lai
Audio Engineer: Jonathan Ho
Production Assistant: Mag Shuiman
Researcher: Vivian Jao
Fact-Checker: Ryan Harrington
Translator: Chawadee Nualkhair
Post Production Supervisor: Andrea Farr
Post Production Coordinator: Scout Alter
Supervising Editor: Eduardo Araujo
Assistant Editor: Lauren Worona
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00 (fireworks exploding)
00:03 Welcome to Bangkok, Chinatown, Yawarat.
00:05 Look how busy it is on a Sunday night.
00:08 This is a restaurant called Fai Kiao.
00:11 They're known for seafood stir-fry,
00:13 but we're only here to watch one thing,
00:15 Pad Fai Dang, which is an amazing stir-fry technique,
00:18 but it's not just for a show.
00:19 It's actually for flavor.
00:21 Come this way.
00:22 (fireworks exploding)
00:23 Whoa!
00:24 (laughing)
00:26 Okay.
00:27 This fire explosion happens on a regular basis.
00:31 Now, as I said, this place is known for their seafood.
00:34 They're grilling lobsters, oysters.
00:37 We could have spent all episode
00:39 looking at all the other dishes that they do,
00:40 but this stir-fry technique is ridiculous.
00:43 Fire, flame, and then smoke everywhere.
00:45 But while that happens, this is the setup.
00:48 You come to a lot of these stir-fry restaurants
00:50 in Chinatowns, you look at your ingredients,
00:52 and you look at what's fresh,
00:53 and you decide what you want to eat.
00:55 I think a lot of the lobster is for show.
00:57 They're big, they're impressive,
00:58 they're fun to take pictures of,
00:59 but the real technique is down to the stir-fry.
01:02 The stir-fry is typically applied to water spinach.
01:05 Nice, tender leaves, thick, chewy stems,
01:08 and they're hollow in the middle.
01:09 And like a bucatini, like a penne,
01:12 because it's hollow in the middle,
01:13 it's gonna catch a lot of that delicious sauce.
01:16 I think chef is getting ready for another one.
01:18 See in there, that's water spinach,
01:20 prepped, cleaned, plucked.
01:22 Inside of that water spinach plate are a couple of things.
01:25 First, his aromatics, his flavors.
01:27 So chili, tiny, famous Thai garlic,
01:29 salt, sugar, MSG, a little bit of liquid,
01:32 soy sauce and oyster sauce,
01:33 and a little bit of soybean paste,
01:36 which is what you see right here.
01:38 That's the secret, a little bit of water.
01:39 He's gonna get it really, really nice and hot.
01:41 When he's dropping that water spinach
01:43 into the smoking hot wok,
01:46 and it's all just gonna go kaboom.
01:48 Usually, adding relatively cold water to hot oil,
01:52 horrible, horrible idea, because it splutters.
01:54 But spluttering is exactly what they want.
01:57 What the chef is looking for
01:59 is this thing we call emulsification.
02:01 They want violent movement.
02:03 It's gonna tie and bind the oil and water together
02:05 as it jumps and jumps,
02:06 and that's when you get cohesive flavor.
02:08 Second reason for this stir fry
02:10 is what we call in Cantonese cooking, wok hei.
02:13 As it touches the wok, it's gonna sear.
02:15 All the sugar is gonna caramelize,
02:16 you're gonna get color,
02:17 and then once you toss it up in the air,
02:19 fire on the side is gonna lick it.
02:20 That's what wok hei is all about,
02:22 and this is wok hei to the maximum.
02:23 All the oil is just like past the smoking temp,
02:26 smoking out after like five tosses,
02:29 and you see how tender it is?
02:30 And that liquid on the bottom, fully emulsified.
02:32 Kam krap, thank you.
02:36 Okay, typical dish you'll find it
02:37 at a lot of Thai restaurants,
02:38 but when you know it's good is if they have that boom.
02:40 You can only get that emulsification
02:42 if you're really moving the oil particles
02:44 and the water particles so it becomes one.
02:46 And this is, should be delicious enough.
02:53 Ridiculous.
02:54 All those elements are in all the aromatics,
02:58 salty, savory, spicy, all tied together.
03:01 A little bit of that fattiness from the lard.
03:03 So good.
03:04 Lard also explains the lower smoking point,
03:07 which is why it smokes up by so much.
03:09 Garlicky, faintly spicy.
03:13 But the primary savory element is the soybean paste.
03:16 Thai-style soybean paste, which is half blended,
03:20 but they keep some of it for texture.
03:23 The heartier stems are crispy, they're crunchy.
03:26 When it's cooked, it activates all these
03:28 sweet spinach flavors that you wouldn't be able to get
03:31 without cooking it properly.
03:33 Here's that famous tiny garlic.
03:35 And look at how soft this garlic is.
03:38 He stir-fried this for 10 seconds.
03:41 I'm totally making these numbers up,
03:42 but he's at least, at least 750, 800 degrees Fahrenheit.
03:47 This restaurant is called Pai Kiao.
03:50 Fight, fire, kiao, green, for this tablecloth.
03:53 But also the implication that hotter than red
03:56 is that green, blue flame.
03:59 The first time we asked Jeff,
04:00 before it got so busy, about this technique,
04:02 he said you can use Pad Pai Jang for sauces
04:05 that need emulsifying for like seafood dishes.
04:07 (speaking in foreign language)
04:09 All right, thank you.
04:10 Okay.
04:12 That is what we call emulsification.
04:14 Garlic, chilies, Sichuan peppercorn,
04:17 basil, macroon lime leaf.
04:19 Clams, shrimp, squid, some red onion,
04:23 a little bit of ginger.
04:25 Nice, fresh, sweet clams.
04:27 But mostly this sauce together.
04:29 Everything that was meant to be in this dish
04:32 is now in this bite.
04:33 With mixed seafood dishes, it's always difficult
04:37 because different seafoods cook at different times.
04:39 All this comes down to the chef's experience
04:42 and his handle on the wok.
04:44 One thing to point out is green peppercorns.
04:47 Green peppercorns are technically unripe peppercorns.
04:51 This was here before the chili pepper,
04:53 and this was therefore the main agent
04:56 through which we got that numbing,
04:59 tingling, spice feeling in our mouth.
05:02 It's not technically a taste, right?
05:03 It's a feeling.
05:04 The taste itself is fruity,
05:05 but these peppercorns are really hard to come by
05:08 outside of regions like Provo.
05:10 They go bad very, very quick.
05:12 You'll often see them in other places
05:13 like the US in an Asian supermarket.
05:15 They're pickled or brined,
05:17 but when you have them fresh,
05:19 they really contribute to the sauce.
05:21 They're so tender.
05:24 They're spicy, but they're not too spicy.
05:26 They have a burst of fruitiness.
05:28 Really special.
05:29 One of those special dishes that just,
05:31 you can only get when you're in a place like here,
05:33 like Chinatown in Bangkok.
05:34 That explosion, it's for show.
05:40 I mean, they named this restaurant
05:42 after that flame technique,
05:44 but it's also there for flavor.
05:45 That's what I love about so much of food eats.
05:47 It's as much of a spectacle as it can be,
05:50 but usually 90% of the time is good reason for it.
05:53 And it produces delicious results
05:54 that you can see all over Thai cooking
05:56 in the restaurants all over Bangkok, Chinatown.
05:59 [BLANK_AUDIO]