Which Egg Should I Wok On: Large, Medium, or MiniMax?

garthb4903 · January 2018

Wondering which of my eggs I should wok on (and purchase supplies), which egg do you recommend I get the wok setup for? I'm guessing due to heat there may be one that is preferable to others, thanks.

nolaegghead · January 2018

If you're planning on using the wok often, the money you spend on a spider will get you half way there to a decent gas burner that you can hook up to a standard 20lb propane tank. The gas burners are will give you a max btu that you'll rarely need (at least mine will incinerate any food at full blast) and you can moderate the fire, which you will not be able to do on the egg (it will run more or less full blast all the time unless you shut the lid, and so you would need a smaller wok with handles).

Anyway, that said, plenty of folks here use their woks on the egg, nothing wrong with it, but it's a lot more work and lump (aka money in fuel) and the flavor difference isn't very noticeable unless you can close the lid. Some smoke creeps in the wok, but with a hot wok you can get a wok hei (not sure of the spelling) which is a smokey flavor from the extremely hot wok almost burning the food.

But for the novelty and, because life is too easy, it's totally fine and it will yield great results.

Others will chime in and give you more of the advice you're looking for. I'm not the person that always takes the easy route, but when it comes to woks, I like my gas burner.

cheers, nola

Dyal_SC · January 2018

garthb4903 said:

Wondering which of my eggs I should wok on (and purchase supplies), which egg do you recommend I get the wok setup for? I'm guessing due to heat there may be one that is preferable to others, thanks.

Love wokking on the large, but it doesn’t really matter.... like Nola said, you just gotta get a wok hot.

Dyal_SC · January 2018

Oh and I have the typical spider and wok setup.

GrateEggspectations · January 2018

While you may ultimately want to pursue a designated wok setup on one Egg only, there is no reason you have to restrict your setup to one cooker or another. I have taken an unorthodox approach and have cooked woks on my Large, Medium and MM using nothing other than the same single round-bottomed, single-handled (i.e., mandarin) wok and in the case of the Large, a Smokeware Raiser. This has likely been cheaper and certainly much more versatile than a one Egg wok-specific setup.

To begin with, personally, I think that mandarin-style woks are preferable to Cantonese dual D-handled ones for use on the Egg. The single handle stays outside of the Egg during the cook and therefore stays cool, allowing you to toss the food one-handed during cooking, remove the wok from the heat source and even carry the cooked food into your house in your wok one-handed (whereas use of Cantonese woks necessitate handling and transport of a hot wok with two hands and heat-protective gloves - not convenient if you have to open patio doors or do something important like hold a beer). From the links below, you'll see that the handle is also the key to getting the wok to sit nicely within the Medium and Large. While the handle does prevent one from closing the lid, I have never felt the need to do so with wok cooking. The wok gets hot very quickly, meaning that closing the lid would prevent one from stirring, thereby burning the food. Others may take different approaches, but I have never felt the need to close the dome during a wok cook and therefore see only disadvantages to the more popular dual D-handled woks for use on Eggs. Perhaps this would be different for those who are steaming food and would want to close the dome.

Because the fire is already so close to the grate on the MM, I wok right at grate level when employed on that Egg. Pics of my roughly 15" wok on the MM here:
http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1198111/wok-night-pic-heavy
I think you may have trouble using anything bigger than a 15" on the MM. This size seems perfect to me.

I use the same 15" wok on the Large conjunction with a Smokeware Raiser while perching the wok down into the firebox:
http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1204637/smokeware-raiser
You could likely jerry-rig some other support on top of the fire ring, but I already had the Raiser and low and behold, it worked.

I have done wok cooking on a Medium with nothing other than a 15", again, perching the wok down within the firebox (this time, with the lip of the wok resting on the fire ring and no auxiliary instruments). This is discussed in my comments here:
http://eggheadforum.com/discussion/1197045/wok-question
You could easily employ this trick on the Large if you bought a larger wok than I have (though it may then be too big for the MM). I had initially bought the wok for use on the Medium when it was my only Egg. I have been fortuitous in that I've been able to make it compatible with the Large and MM that I have acquired since.

Finally, you haven't solicited advice on the material of the wok, but I will chime in on this regardless, just in case it is material to your question (no pun intended) - I would go for carbon steel over cast iron. The former is much lighter and heats up and cools down more quickly than CI - a property that is very beneficial when doing hot and fast cooks.

These are all just opinions, so feel free to employ a healthy dose of skepticism.

I now use the wok on the Eggs quite frequently and have just done so earlier this week (despite all the snow and chilling temperatures). It's a really fun cook and, like I said in one of the linked threads above, it keeps splatter and smoke outside.

No matter what setup you end up with, I think you'll have great fun with a wok.

Chubbs · January 2018

My thoughts are depending on how much food you are cooking the open dome adds air to the fire and gets it going big time. I would think cooking on a smaller verse like mini max that the flame would go wilder than the large as the egg is bigger and contain more flame. I have large and mini and use my large to wok. Never tried the mini for it. But people do with success. Different size eggs hold different sized spiders which can change your wok size. That said if cooking bigger portions yet another vote for the large egg (larger spider and larger wok)

GoldenQ · January 2018

I agree with NOLAEGGHEAD

SciAggie · January 2018

I'll weigh in with some comments. You have received great advice from @nolaegghead and @GrateEggspectations both. You're dilemma is to determine what you want and what your expectations really are.
As my sig line says, I have a MM that I bought mainly for a wok. I'll be the first to tell you though that it isn't perfect for the application. I tell people I have spent thousands of dollars to be able to cook like people did hundreds of years ago, lol. I wanted a way to stir fry over charcoal - the old fashioned way if you will - so I wanted the MM. It most closely emulates the charcoal cookers you might see in China. https://www.wokshop.com/newstore/product/clay-brazierstove-wok-not-included/
The MM does this and more so I'm very happy with it. The downside is it takes some time and effort to get the wok really hot and sustain a coal bed that keeps it hot. There is also the downside that you can't turn down the heat once it is really hot.
A dedicated gas burner is a much better heat source for stir fry. Either a fish fry burner or a dedicated wok burner are great. https://www.wokshop.com/newstore/product/wok-stove-32-000-btu/
I think the BEST heat source is the gas burner. I chose the MM instead though because - I'm the wood_fired_foodie - lol. Maybe some of this helps.

Edit - As someone else said first somewhere here, the BGE is the Swiss Army Knife of cookers. It does almost everything really well - it's also not the BEST for many cooking applications. In my opinion the egg makes good BBQ. I'm talking about brisket specifically. That said I never cook a brisket on the egg. I'll chose a stick burner and all the work associated with it every time because I think the results are superior. The egg makes great pizza (so does your house oven) - but a wood fired oven can't be beat overall (in my opinion). Stir fry is in the same vein - the egg does a good job. If you want the BEST option then a gas burner is clearly the best choice. These are my opinions and if others disagree that is okie dokie with me. I'm just offering my opinion to hopefully help you make your decision.

Skrullb · January 2018

I love to wok on my medium. I bought the Woo2 for it and a carbon steel wok from TCGS and it’s a great set up. Fried rice and stir fry are two of my favorite cooks

Which Egg Should I Wok On: Large, Medium, or MiniMax?

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