I previously got a wok – a nice cast iron one.  Cast iron requires ‘seasoning’.  With some lard or other saturated fat and heating the iron forms a bond with the fat to make a permeant non-stick surface.  It looks ‘dirty’ or like teflon, but quite a bit more natural.

One of the side bits of cooking with cast iron is a small amount of iron gets into the food.  This is important for vegetarians (of which I am certainly not, but several my family are) where iron from red meats doesn’t enter the diet.

To test out how the wok works, I started with making three strips of bacon – just to understand it better and to add a bit more to the seasoning.  The wok gets hot in the center and while the handles are hot, top part isn’t hot enough for cooking.  This made bacon a bit awkward.  Next time I use it for bacon, cut the bacon strips in half so I can get more of it in the center.

I put in some sesame oil (didn’t have peanut oil, but just not the biggest fan of peanuts), and then into that crushed a garlic clove and a bit of soy sauce.  The beef I had thawed out the previous night was one that was cut for stroganoff, but didn’t realize that until it was on the Wok.  Safeway has their beef cut for various applications.  Precut beef makes for much easier packaging for freezing.

So, some beef, then some green peppers and onions and then the second half the can of bamboo that I had the other day.

It took some bit for oil and soy sauce to get absorbed into the food, but once it did, it was very quick cooking.

T’wards the very end, I tossed some red pepper flakes in thinking that it might be a bit bland.  The pepper flakes did help.

Next time, I’ll toss some green onions in along with the celery and carrots?

The portions worked quite well.  Packets have a limiting of size in their nature and occasionally need a side dish with them.  Its difficult to get enough vegetable matter into a packet, the stir fry has less problem.