Category: FAQ

I am considering purchasing one of your propane stoves, could you tell me about how long a 20lb propane tank lasts?

If we only cook a couple dishes a day, it lasts more than 3 months.

For all of our single stoves, maximum number of ring burners is 2. However for each ring, there are yet two rings of flames. So when you light it up, there are total of 4 flame circles.  We carry two burner stoves and three burner stoves in our product section.  For the two burner stove, each burner has two rings. So number of total rings is 4 (number of total flame circles is 7).

I’m shopping around for an outdoor wok cooker. My wife stir fries all the time on our indoor gas stove, which has a 14,000 BTU burner. All of my Chinese friends stir fry on their indoor gas/electric stoves, which have burners no more than 14,000 BTUs. My question is why do you say that successful stir frying requires such high BTUs (130K)?

First of all, can you point us to which web page has such phrase as “successful stir frying requires such high BTUs (130K)”? We would like to change that because it is misleading to people.  Please bear in mind that cooking style and technique are very personal. With any kind of cooking equipment people can always find ways to cook tasty food. However, in our opinion, high power stove is the key to cook crispy full of wok-hei type of food people used to only able to get from restaurants. With higher power stove, people’s cooking style and technique change too, especially the speed in processing the food.

I believe a gas burner with a rating of 14K is already considered high for an indoor gas stove. Why do outdoor cookers cookers have such high BTU ratings compared with indoor gas stoves? Are indoor and outdoor BTU ratings equivalent?

First of all I’m only aware of one BTU rating for all stoves no matter they are used inside or outside of a house. With a 14K BTU stove, you can take time to heat the wok up. However, the wok temperature dips once you toss in green vegetables and fresh meat. Now it takes time to heat those up again. Because the time is long relatively, the food is cooked differently than from a high power stove.  I believe that there is regulation or at least concerns of using too powerful stove inside a house. Outdoor has looser regulation. 

Basically, the primary reason I’m looking for an outdoor cooker is to avoid the messiness of stir frying, steaming, and stir frying on my indoor gas stove. If the food will come out tasting better, that will be a big bonus. 🙂

Solving the messiness and greasiness by indoor stir frying was the #1 reason for my invention years ago. Adding the capability to attain different tastes was not thought of initially.

   I like to understand the effect of wok-hei on flat noodles with some fish sauce and sweet sauce. i tried many times and failed to achieve this at home. pls advice. many thanks.

We would not want to claim that we are expert on wok-hei. So if you have different opinion, please let us know.  If you can speak Cantonese, than you should understand that wok-hei can be directly translated into “smell or taste from a wok”. Typically this applied to some food that can be coated with cooking oil, then the cooking oil catches fire briefly, to leave a layer of initial charring type smell or taste. Catching fire seldom occurs at home cooking since it is unsafe in an enclosed space and quite messy. Thus wok hei is rare and favored.  If your noodle is wet and you apply various sauce, then the surface of your noodle will have hard time to catch fire. Another condition for fire catching is that your wok has to be at quite high heat and you have open flame from your stove (electric stove does not have) to introduce the flame to your wok surface.

How to distinguish from the taste whether caramelization and/or Maillard reaction has taken place? please advice.

It is piezoelectric. You do not need to hook it up to any electrical source or battery.

Our regulator regulates the propane pressure to the stove. We would not recommend to use it as a valve. We would recommend to shut off the tank valve after use.

PF13CS130 can be used to connect to a throw away propane bottle (camping 1lb) or a regular tank.  PF13S130 can be only used to connect to a regular propane tank.