Here are some more pictures for the gas burner test.

First, for the volcano burner test, flame is directed towards the centre of the wok. At 49sec, it starts boiling. At 1min 7sec, it comes to rolling boil. At 3min 7sec, still boiling, and quite a fair amount has evaporated. At 4min 16sec, done!

Second, for the ring sealed burner test, flame does not look that suitable for wok as it mainly points outside, licking just the side of the wok. At 2min 52sec, there is a small amount of bubble. At 6min 45sec, visually there is no real action, but some amount of water has evaporated already. At 9min 57sec, done!

Here are some more pictures for induction hob.

First, with De Buyer ring, at 20sec water starts boiling. At 36sec, it boils vigorously. At 2min 26sec, almost gone. At 2min 55sec, done!

Second, with Electrolux ring, at 28sec water starts boiling. At 1min 57sec, it has been boiling for a while, but not as vigorously as De Buyer ring. At 3min 34sec, done!

Thank you.

Chanop, is this available in the US? I presume you're in Australia. I previously wanted a high BRU wok burner but none of the ones in the US would fit into my existing space.

Inga

Hi Inga, I am in Australia, yes. Said Asko is not available in USA, yet. Perhaps, one day through Sub-Zero/Wolf.

Neat! Do you know how well the induction ring works for actually stir frying rather than just boiling? Also wondering if this is worth getting for my Miele...

@lharpie, it works well enough. I bought those rings out of curiosity to see how well it would wok. However, you will have to find a combination of a ring and a wok that work for you. There will be wok that sits lower, closer to the surface, and some that sit higher. Thickness probably will be part of the equation too.

For stir frying, I actually don't like the combo of De Buyer ring and 13" carbon steel wok above at the moment. It is too hot for my usual habit. The pan is a bit thinner and sits quite low on. At boost, the combo char ingredient easily, but if it is not on boost, it is a bit too slow.

I think I will just have to learn how to handle it. On the other hand, I am quite happy with this wok and Electrolux ring for my current pace. It is a bit less hot, and a bit more controllable.

I have another 15" wok that is also a touch thicker. It works well with De Buyer ring.

If you don't have a good gas burner and want to play with round bottom wok, it is a good buy I think. I bought mine from a local shop for about AUD 45, not too dear to try.

Thanks - that's helpful! Unfortunately I'm in the US and can't seem to find the Electrolux one at all, and the De Buyer I can only find in one place on-line sold with the wok for $115 (which seems a bit high for something that may or may not play nice together). :( If anyone has found a way to buy either ring solo let me know!

lharpie, there was also a thread on chow that discussed De Buyer ring. Also try searching for De Buyer 3122.00 as exact brand and part number. On Amazon uk, it is just £22. and on Amazon ca, about CDN 64.

This http://www.debuyer-brandshop.com/ is doing it for €30 VAT included and looks like they ship world wide. For US shipping, you should get VAT off, around 20%.

Chanop, we're planning a new kitchen and are interested in the Atag Fusion Volcano wok burner. In your review you wrote "initial flame out of the box was a bit wimp, with a small adjustment, I have been quite happy with how it performs". What was this small adjustment??

kwdewinter, if you are buying ATAG, you probably already are in Europe. Gas spec in Europe is different to what's in Australia. Rating for Europe as far as I know is 6kw/3kw for outer ring and inner ring, for Australia it is 5.5kw/2.7kw. So basically it is not as hot as model in Europe.

I wrote about interesting 23.5 Mj Neil Perry Kitchen work burner in this thread. A couple of weeks back I went into their showroom again to do the same 80ml water evaporation test. The result on the same wok for this burner is 6min 17sec. It definitely is hotter than my Asko/ATAG outer ring rated at 19.7 Mj, but still not quite as good as the inner Volcano burner for small wok for this test.

Chanop, that's good to know, thanks! Sounds like the people at Asko/Atag have indeed succeeded to develop a very efficient wok burner at a mere 3 kW/h gas consumption. Is it hot enough for your 15 inch wok in practice and can you get the elusive 'wok hey' with it? Also, you haven't explained yet what 'small adjustment' you made to the Fusion Volcano burner... :)

Chanop, got your message but couldn't respond. How does this work?

Houzz interface is a little different. I think you have to click on my profile name (or go to http://www.houzz.com/user/schanop) then click send message button from there.

Or perhaps, via your profile page, there should be a "message" tab.

I have four woks in the drawer under the cooktop, 13" thin carbon steel, 15" slightly thick carbon steel, 14" thick, hand hammered carbon steel, and 14" cast iron. If I cook an amount of food for one small plate sharing i.e. about to fit one Corelle 8" 15oz bowl, I can get pretty good searing and heat sustainability on all those woks that I have. They just take different amount of time to heat up.

First picture is my 13", and quite a full plate of food for Corelle bowl.

Second and third picture are for my 15", and a good fitting amount of food on Corelle bowl.

For my cooking, the volcano burner works very well for me to do a number of smaller sharing dishes per meal. You can get a good wok hei, and a good sizzling though out a cook with smaller batch. However, if a wok is loaded up with food, results may not be as good as other more powerful alternatives.

During my decision which gas burner to get, this demo video was one quite a convincing evidence that the burner work. If I am not mistaken, the wok used in the video was 12". It could have been 13", but it did look quite small. The whole cooking time for fried rice from start to finish as demonstrated was just under three minutes.

Hi Chanop, thanks so much for the very useful info! I have not been able to contact you directly. I presume you increased the diameter of the gas pipes feeding your wok burner to get a better result?

Sorry for late reply. I just got back from a trip. You should be able to send message to me via my profile page if you want any specific question. My plumber ran a half inch gas line from an internal gas line to the two burners. The internal line itself is a bit bigger than that, also feeding gas heater, hot water, and BBQ.

I went to my friend place who has Highland (local Australian brand) 22 Mj/6kW burner. As far as I know this is a German burner that can be found on many gas cooktops, ranges, and rangetops. I am pretty sure it is the same as Miele domino wok hob, older wolf all gas range with dual ring sealed burners.

Repeating the same test with the same wok and 80ml of water. It took 7min 25sec to evaporate water. So it seems to sit in the middle between Neil Perry wok burner at 23.5 Mj @6min 17sec and my own burner at 19.7 Mj outer ring @appaling 9min 57sec.

I saw Trevor in this video taking the cap of Wolf burner that looks similar to this Highland burner for his flame direction experiment. I gave it a go for the sake of fun. Same experiment, and it took 5min 50sec to evaporate the water. Thumb up for straight up flame direction. Bubbling pattern looks more vigorous than when cap is on. The wok may also sitting a bit low for optimal heat, but that's just a guess.

thank you Chanop, for this very informative thread !

On my modded gaz hob, it's faster with the botom of the wok close to the burner head.

I've saw a promising gaz burner on aliexpress but I didn't manage to found the manufacturer. :/

Yes, sub. Your mod job is still on the smaller side and still having flame shooting outwards rather than straight up. When a wok is sitting on the stand, it may be too far from the hottest part of the flame.
The burner from Ali looks good. If its rating is at least 15Mj, it would be good. And it would be excellent if rating is somewhere more than 20Mj.
I have seen a number of Chinese burners with flame ports shooting straight up for wokking, but those are rated only to about 14Mj.
Rating from manufacturer is important because it also involves air intake design. An orifice can be increased only so much by user that gas and oxygen mixture would still be in a good ratio.

"I have seen a number of Chinese burners with flame ports shooting
straight up for wokking, but those are rated only to about 14Mj."

Me too, I've saw a 3.6kW inner-flame burner made by Rinnai and rebranded by others but it will be difficult to source them.

Those do not look too bad. 3.4kW is comparable to Asko/ATAG, for which its inner flame is rated at 3kW for European model and 2.7kW for Australian model. Asko/ATAG would however be more versatile due to its combined triple burners: simmer, volcano wok burner, and normal wide high power 6kW burner.

Anyway, after I have been using a dedicated induction wok hob for a few months now, I would totally suggest it as a better option for indoor wok cooking. It works better than these smaller burners (lets say under 4kW) most of the time. The only thing I can't say is whether it works better than, or comparable to, or worse than those high power open burners from BlueStar and Capital.

Here are some additional data points from doing the wok test on my Bluestar range using a 14" round bottom, carbon steel wok directly in the burner bowl (no wok ring):

http://wokshop.stores.yahoo.net/nepowwokwflo.html

22K burner: 3:40

15K burner: 4:51

9K simmer burner: 5:03

The interesting thing is that the simmer burner result is almost the same as the 15K. This is likely due to the fact that the simmer burner has all of its output concentrated in a smaller area on the very bottom of the wok. The 15K flames go a third of the way up the sides.

Thank John for additional data point on BlueStar. 3min 40sec seems to be consistent with Trevor's test on Capital 3min 36sec with 25k BTU burner.

For my AEG induction wok hob @ 3.2kW, it takes just 2min 52sec to evaporate 80ml of water. It is best however to see in pictures how this behaves.

This is a 14" wok that fits the curvature rather well. It sits with bottom half or third touching the recess area. This is somewhere around where the water edge is. It is also around the area where induction coil locates. You can see the darker seasoned area. That's where the main heating zone and my main cooking zone is.

At a few seconds in after the induction unit starts on P, we can see bubbles forming. That makes sense as it is the area where induction coil is.

At 11sec, steam starts to form. Bubbles now form a solid ring around the edge.

At 16sec, steam starts to fill up my cooking area.

At 41sec, this is smoking hot wok. Water is boiling vigorously though out. It is a bit difficult to see with this amount of steam, but you know what it is.

This show the amount of steam from a different angle.

At around 2min mark, the huge heat from induction is dying down. This is mainly because the water level drops below the area of the induction coil. So it is entering the much cooler spot. The heat that keeps evaporating the water now is from conduction, which is not the best thing for thin carbon steel.

You can see that it takes quite a long time to evaporate this very small amount of remaining water. The slight red glow clearly shows where the induction coil is.

At last, we get there by 2min 52sec.

Cheers to induction wok hob. You're the best.

For completeness-sake, I am repeating the experiment with AEG supplied clad wok. The stainless steel clad wok is 16" and quite heavy. It supposes to have better conductivity compared with thin carbon steel wok.

At 8sec in, bubbles start to form clearly around the induction coil zone.

At 15sec, boiling is quite even through out the whole area.

I tried to capture the steam in picture, but it is as clearly seen. However, bubbly boiling water is quite clear at 23sec.

At 1min 14sec, quite a good amount of water has already been evaporated. The wok is still creating a good amount of bubbles which is quite different to carbon steel wok where boiling activity is much reduced at this level of water. So it is quite clear that this clad wok is doing much better at spreading out heat from induction coil zone down to the bottom.

At 1min 32 sec, we are almost there.

And at 1min 48sec, we are done.

Despite this wok is doing much better at conducting heat to the middle, I don't use it for my regular stir fry mainly because it is much heavier which makes tossing food very awkward and it does not have seasoning which means food sticks. However, I often use this pan for steaming, cooking pasta dishes, as well as making some sauces where high heat and non stick property of carbon steel wok are not required.

For completeness-sake, I am repeating the experiment with AEG supplied clad wok. The stainless steel clad wok is 16" and quite heavy. It supposes to have better conductivity compared with thin carbon steel wok.

At 8sec in, bubbles start to form clearly around the induction coil zone.

At 15sec, boiling is quite even through out the whole area.

I tried to capture the steam in picture, but it is as clearly seen. However, bubbly boiling water is quite clear at 23sec.

At 1min 14sec, quite a good amount of water has already been evaporated. The wok is still creating a good amount of bubbles which is quite different to carbon steel wok where boiling activity is much reduced at this level of water. So it is quite clear that this clad wok is doing much better at spreading out heat from induction coil zone down to the bottom.

At 1min 32 sec, we are almost there.

And at 1min 48sec, we are done.

Despite this wok is doing much better at conducting heat to the middle, I don't use it for my regular stir fry mainly because it is much heavier which makes tossing food very awkward and it does not have seasoning which means food sticks. However, I often use this pan for steaming, cooking pasta dishes, as well as making some sauces where high heat and non stick property of carbon steel wok are not required.