Salt and pepper shrimp · sesame cucumber salad · jasmine rice
· Nate, solo · outside — the wok's first deep fry
Sit-down time
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Gotchas — read before firing the burner
The burner rule inverts tonight. The 7/23 wide-open lesson was for stir-fry. Frying wants a low flame holding 350–375°F, and the aromatic toss wants medium. Wide open at either stage is wrong.
Hot oil is tonight's only real hazard. Two rules cover it: the wok never moves while oil is in it, and the burner is off before the ladle comes out.
Garlic burns in ~15 seconds in a thin film in a wok that just held 375°F. Medium flame, keep everything moving. This is the most common way the dish fails.
Cornstarch at the last second. On damp shrimp it hydrates into paste and you lose the crust entirely.
Two batches, not one. 28 shrimp at once crashes the oil temp and steams them.
Peppers and onion before garlic, never with it. They need 2–3 min, garlic needs 30 seconds. Get the veg colored and dry before the shrimp return — their moisture is the enemy of the crust.
Loose C, not a tight O. A tightly curled shrimp is overcooked. Pull them at the loose curl.
Handle gets hot outdoors — the wide flame laps around the birch. Towel or glove, every grab.
Storm plan: the Weber with the grate off is the better fallback than the indoor range — this dish smokes heavily.
No soap. Hot-water rinse only, now and forever.
0 of 17 steps
After dinner: let the oil cool completely in the metal container before dealing with it — strained it keeps, but seafood oil picks up flavor, so reuse for seafood only. Wok aftercare while warm: hot-water rinse, dry on the burner till steam stops, micro-thin oil film — and note whether the deep fry built or stripped the patina, that data point is new. Then the cook-log entry (recipe verdict, whether the 4-hour fridge dry paid off, actual fry times batch 1 vs 2, whether 1:1 salt-to-pepper was right), set last-cooked: 2026-07-25 on both recipes, archive the brief.