One of the major reasons why your home-made “Chinese” food doesn’t taste like the best restaurants isn’t because you don’t have the right ingredients. If you live anywhere near a city, you can get all those. It isn’t the sauces. There are a lot of great ones out there. The problem is HEAT.

If you do a stir fry, you need a wok. And you need it to be hot. Crazy hot. Why? If it’s not hot enough, the meat stews in its juices instead of cooking instantly. Same thing with the veggies. You want them to cook quick. Real quick.

And so now I’m experimenting. I learned that putting a wok on the grill — over charcoal — give you the super heat. But round wok on flat grill = something will go wrong.

But, a-ha! I see that Weber has their Gourmet BBQ System. Basically, it’s a grill that has a removable — round — grate. But, alas! The gas grill sold at Home Depot, which I’d love to have, is out of my price range at the moment.

But all is not lost! I recently learned that they make a version of the grate for the kettle grills! Horray! Now I can put an inexpensive ($15) 14″-16″ steel wok on the grill and not have it flip.

And so I got the grate ($35) and the wok ($15) for less than a new grill ($400) would run me.

Let the experiments begin…