A wok is a Chinese pan with a rounded bottom and deep, slanting sides that's made of rolled or stainless steel, cast iron or aluminum and comes in a variety of sizes.
Woks are the preferred cooking vessel for making a stir-fry. The bottom gets piping hot, allowing you to quickly sear ingredients in a small amount of oil, then push them up to rest on the wok's sides while you cook the remaining ingredients, and finally mix them all together with the flip of your wrist. But woks are also all-purpose stovetop pans that can be used to stew, steam, braise or deep-fry food.
Flat-bottomed and electric woks are also available for those cooking over electric burners or wanting a stand-alone heat source.
What's the difference between a fritter and a croquette?
What's the difference between a fritter and a croquette?
Fritters and croquettes are both bite-sized sweet or savory morsels that are deep fried and served hot. You can make fritters and croquettes out of everything from seafood to apples.
Traditionally, a fritter is a piece of food that is dipped in batter before being fried, although many fritter recipes involve chopping up ingredients and mixing them with or without batter into a very soft dough before frying.
A French croquette classically consists of a sweet or savory mixture of ingredients bound in a thick sauce, shaped into bite-sized, usually cylindrical pieces, coated with egg and breadcrumbs and fried in oil until crisp and golden.
We eat them with hamburgers, the French serve them with steak, the Belgians like them with mussels.
What Americans call French fries (in Britain, Australia and New Zealand, often thick-cut deep- or "French-fried" potatoes are referred to as chips) are called pommes frites -- or just frites -- in France. So why do we call them French?
Some say it's because of the "French" cut of the potatoes; others, the "French-fried" cooking method; or that the name caught on after English-speaking World War I soldiers ate fries in Belgium, naming them "French" because that was the official language of the Belgian army. The Belgians are generally considered the originators of the French fry, although at least one historian argues that fries were first introduced in Spain.
