Yesterday I made the Smoky Bok Choy with Garlic Sauce recipe from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

No unusual ingredients for this dish.

The notes indicate that this recipe depends on the “wok hei” flavor and calls for Kenji’s kitchen torch technique to achieve it. Lacking the high heat of restaurant wok burners, Kenji advises using a kitchen torch and charring the bok choy early in the stir fry. I don’t have a kitchen torch and normally would’ve proceeded without it, but since it seemed so crucial for this dish, I was fortunately able to borrow one from a friend.

I ended up making two batches: one torched as called for in the recipe and one untorched.

The bok choy was tasty! My wife said it was good, and she normally doesn’t care for bok choy! My son tried a bite, but said he didn’t like it, while my daughter opted not to try it at all. I’m the only one that tried some of the untorched batch, and I thought the torched batch did taste better, but I had a hard time identifying why. I don’t claim to have a discerning palate, but it may have tasted a tad sweeter?

I’ll likely make this one again (and might even pick up a kitchen torch of my own).

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.