[HN Gopher] The Physics of Fried Rice
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The Physics of Fried Rice
Author : cdepman
Score : 83 points
Date : 2020-02-26 07:43 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (arstechnica.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (arstechnica.com)
| rzmnzm wrote:
| I usually cheat and use parboiled rice, it won't become a sad
| mush.
| thedance wrote:
| The comments of this article are where the meat lies. There's no
| way anyone is flipping rice in a 1200-degree steel wok.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Huh. This whole thing appears to be about how the motion of the
| wok affects the fried rice.
|
| But at the only restaurant I've watched fried rice prepared at (a
| college cafeteria in Shanghai), it was done on a flat iron
| surface, teppanyaki-style. And that was considered the good
| cafeteria.
|
| "The physics of fried rice" seems to overestimate the scope of
| the study a bit.
| asutekku wrote:
| I think "cafeteria" is the key word in here. They most likely
| do not have the time & resources to do it how they would do it
| in a high end restaurant.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| That makes no sense; iron cooking counters everywhere and
| different chefs at different stands to prepare your food on
| demand are a much _bigger_ investment of time and resources
| than preparing food in bulk in the back on a single stove
| /counter.
| Magi604 wrote:
| Chicken Fried Rice used to be my favorite go-to Chinese
| restaurant dish, but too many places loaded up the dish with tons
| of rice and veggies and skimped hard on the chicken, presumably
| to save on meat costs.
| s_ngularity wrote:
| You should try a Vietnamese place if there's one near by you.
| The ones around here at least don't seem to skimp on the meat
| as much
| ruffyen wrote:
| Why in the hell is this considered...technical?
| wnevets wrote:
| If it is not, why would it matter? Hacker news always has non
| technical post on its front page.
| ruffyen wrote:
| While that may be true this is a new level information i dont
| care about...
| kevinlou wrote:
| That's perfectly fine if you don't care about it, but there
| are plenty of us that do.
| rstupek wrote:
| Apparently enough of us care about it to make it to the
| front page... go figure
| jlisam13 wrote:
| then don't read it
| jvagner wrote:
| ...and if you can't _stand_ to see it, "hide" it.
| mwfunk wrote:
| If you don't care about it, can you even imagine how much
| other people don't care about you not caring about it?
| Seriously. And if you think it's silly to point that out,
| you're the one posting in a thread about how you don't care
| about the thing that the thread is about.
| lacker wrote:
| It is physics. Have a look at their published physics paper,
| it's quite technical.
|
| https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2019.062...
| jjeaff wrote:
| I would hazzard a guess that quite a lot of engineers are into
| cooking because it can be a highly technical and scientific
| process that involves chemistry, physics, and engineering with
| delicious results.
|
| And the highly technical paper in this post attests to that.
| [deleted]
| ilamont wrote:
| _The mathematical model Hu and Ko developed isn 't just a fun
| curiosity; it should also prove useful for industrial robotic
| designs._
|
| I recall seeing somewhere (maybe coverage of CES or another trade
| show) of automated machines for cooking Chinese dishes that
| traditionally had to be made by hand. I can't remember if it was
| for home or industrial use, and I don't remember if fried rice
| was one of the options.
|
| Fried rice _is_ one of the hardest Chinese dishes to cook at
| home, especially if you don 't have a high-temperature gas range
| and want to reduce the amount of oil in the recipe. Lots of
| scraping and hard pushing motions to break up the rice, not to
| mention the slicing/dicing required for prep.
|
| ETA: Found some articles and clips about the tech:
|
| https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/1808963/worlds-...
|
| http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201805/17/WS5afd263fa3103f686...
|
| https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/robot-cooking-machine/
| wincy wrote:
| I started using lard and stopped wanting restaurant fried rice.
| Ingredients go a long way in taste.
|
| In fact, lard makes almost everything taste amazing.
| pfranz wrote:
| Do you use store bought lard or do you render it yourself? I
| picked up store bought lard one time and felt it was as bland
| as Crisco. I figured it was just modern processing techniques
| or low quality sourcing. The stuff I rendered myself was leaf
| lard from a heritage pig, which was really really good and
| I'm not sure if it's a fair comparison.
| ilamont wrote:
| We render lard from bacon and chicken fat and refrigerate
| them in jars for later use. Both work nicely with Chinese
| dishes, and this reduces the need to buy cooking oil.
| protomyth wrote:
| True, frybread (which uses lard) is really good but really
| not healthy for you.
| basch wrote:
| The only non sea creature derived animal product to make
| the list is Pork fat.
|
| https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20180126-the-100-most-
| nut...
| jjeaff wrote:
| Not healthy, but likely healthier than many vegetable oils
| or other unholy substitutes.
| ska wrote:
| > especially if you don't have a high-temperature gas range
|
| Some people suggest extra effort to accommodate for not having
| the right heat source: https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/02/hei-
| now-youre-a-wok-star...
| bobthepanda wrote:
| This seems dangerous.
|
| Growing up as an Asian American, my family's gas stove
| definitely wasn't hot enough, but we also had a separate
| butane burner that was rated for indoor use. (You could also
| use it for things like hot pot, so it's not like it was the
| only thing we used it for.) So long as you have a well
| ventilated area not very close to a smoke alarm you should be
| good.
| ska wrote:
| I suspect the separate burner is a better approach.
|
| People use such torches for other things though (e.g. sous
| vide, but usually with a deflector); I don't know if it's
| really a risk. I haven't tried it just happened to see the
| article a few days ago and remembered.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| There's nothing particularly dangerous about a blowtorch in
| the kitchen. They're common for things like creme brulee.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > Fried rice is one of the hardest Chinese dishes to cook at
| home, especially if you don't have a high-temperature gas range
| and want to reduce the amount of oil in the recipe. Lots of
| scraping and hard pushing motions to break up the rice, not to
| mention the slicing/dicing required for prep.
|
| I found this funny. That's a fair call on the slicing/dicing,
| except I'm pretty sure the traditional way to make fried rice
| is to throw in whatever leftovers you already have to hand.
|
| So if you're already cooking other Chinese food, fried rice is
| just a mostly-free leftovers dish. It works as part of the
| entire Chinese-food cultural complex; it's harder to slot in to
| a schedule of foreign food, where every element of it has to be
| prepared specially.
|
| (Of course it's popular in restaurants now, and they must make
| it in a consistent way. But you don't need to.)
| moltar wrote:
| Can't speak for Chinese, but Thai fried rice is a very
| specific dish that doesn't have much variation, other than
| the choice of protein source.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| Chinese fried rice isn't like that at all.
| jjeaff wrote:
| Doing a mushy, sad fried rice at home is easy. But I think op
| was referring to the difficult of making -good- fried rice.
|
| It's not the ingredients or prep that is hard, it's that you
| need a carbon steel wok and enough BTUs to keep that wok
| around 500F even while dropping cold ingredients into it.
|
| Without a carbon steel or cast iron pan and enough constant
| temp, you won't get the "wok hei" which really affects flavor
| and texture.
|
| J Kenji Lopez has a great write up on the difficulties of
| good fried rice at home.
| https://www.seriouseats.com/2012/06/the-food-lab-for-the-
| bes...
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Great write up from J Kenji Lopez! Thanks for sharing link.
| mytailorisrich wrote:
| Fried rice is usually made with rice leftovers which have
| somewhat dried out. It's a way to make those leftovers more
| palatable. If it's mushy it means that the rice was too
| moist.
|
| It's simple to make with your standard (deep) frying pan,
| on your standard cooker.
| grawprog wrote:
| >was referring to the difficult of making -good- fried
| rice.
|
| I don't really understand, just fry your ingredients at
| high heat and don't stop stirring. Make sure the pan is hot
| before you add oil, make sure the oil's hot before you add
| the ingredients. Start with the meat/protein, when that's
| browned, if you really want it all nice and cooked well,
| take the meat out and put it aside then do the onions, theb
| mushrooms, peppers, veggies etc. Garlic and ginger and
| stuff last, re-add the meat, add your cooked rice, maybe an
| egg at that point and keep stirring until it's nice and
| golden brown.
| kevinlou wrote:
| Is it common to throw the egg in at the end? I was always
| taught to fry and scramble the egg in the oil first.
| p1necone wrote:
| I'm a fan of mixing a couple of egg yolks with the cold
| unfried rice at the beginning, gives you a texture and
| flavour that's very unique compared to normal fried rice.
| nwienert wrote:
| Did you read the parent article? There's a distinct
| smoky, rich flavor and lack of mush that great fried rice
| has that only occurs under those conditions.
|
| Sure, homemade fried rice can be good (with some more
| work than you said) but that's not what the parent was
| saying.
| p1necone wrote:
| The ingredients aren't the hard part - it's the technique and
| equipment involved. There's lot's of other "simple" dishes
| like this where it's all about technique and not just getting
| the right ingredients: french omelettes, bread, carbonara etc
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