The Physics of Fried Rice

<i>The mathematical model Hu and Ko developed isn&#x27;t just a fun curiosity; it should also prove useful for industrial robotic designs.</i><p>I recall seeing somewhere (maybe coverage of CES or another trade show) of automated machines for cooking Chinese dishes that traditionally had to be made by hand. I can&#x27;t remember if it was for home or industrial use, and I don&#x27;t remember if fried rice was one of the options.<p>Fried rice <i>is</i> one of the hardest Chinese dishes to cook at home, especially if you don&#x27;t have a high-temperature gas range and want to reduce the amount of oil in the recipe. Lots of scraping and hard pushing motions to break up the rice, not to mention the slicing&#x2F;dicing required for prep.<p>ETA: Found some articles and clips about the tech:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scmp.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;innovation&#x2F;article&#x2F;1808963&#x2F;worlds-first-robot-kitchen-cooks-visitors-ces-asia-shanghai" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.scmp.com&#x2F;tech&#x2F;innovation&#x2F;article&#x2F;1808963&#x2F;worlds-...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chinadaily.com.cn&#x2F;a&#x2F;201805&#x2F;17&#x2F;WS5afd263fa3103f6866ee9050.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.chinadaily.com.cn&#x2F;a&#x2F;201805&#x2F;17&#x2F;WS5afd263fa3103f686...</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&#x2F;home&#x2F;robot-cooking-machine&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.digitaltrends.com&#x2F;home&#x2F;robot-cooking-machine&#x2F;</a>

Oh god this brings back traumatic memories: When I was getting my degree in culinary arts at Bristol (Boston, MA) in the mid-80&#x27;s I had &quot;Professor Wong&quot;, not a professor but a chef who taught a segment on Chinese cuisine. I had to make ~5lbs of fried rice every day for two weeks and he would say in a thick over-emphasized (phony) chinese accent, &quot;You burn rice, you fail!&quot; every day -- with a big smile, of course, but meaning it. And holy HELL was I sore every day during that period. The industrial woks are very heavy and you do need to keep it in constant motion.

Huh. This whole thing appears to be about how the motion of the wok affects the fried rice.<p>But at the only restaurant I&#x27;ve watched fried rice prepared at (a college cafeteria in Shanghai), it was done on a flat iron surface, teppanyaki-style. And that was considered the good cafeteria.<p>&quot;The physics of fried rice&quot; seems to overestimate the scope of the study a bit.

Happy to see my school getting mentioned on HN. Dr. Hu has a TEDx talk called &quot;Confessions of a Wasteful Scientist&quot; (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;david_hu_confessions_of_a_wasteful_scientist" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.ted.com&#x2F;talks&#x2F;david_hu_confessions_of_a_wasteful...</a>) that talks a bit more about research he has done in this vein.

Grandpa bfung said (paraphrased from translated Cantonese): “if your fried rice is the color of soy sauce, you’re doing it wrong - that’s the color of poop”.<p>Just wanted to share some fried rice wisdom.

All of a sudden I got super excited and wanted to go buy a wok, something I&#x27;ve wanted to do for a while, even started looking on Target... then I realized I have an electric range.<p>I could get an outdoor propane stove, can&#x27;t wait for it to get warmer.

Chicken Fried Rice used to be my favorite go-to Chinese restaurant dish, but too many places loaded up the dish with tons of rice and veggies and skimped hard on the chicken, presumably to save on meat costs.

The comments of this article are where the meat lies. There’s no way anyone is flipping rice in a 1200-degree steel wok.

When physics and food meet.. It&#x27;s a dinner made in geometrical heaven, and shoulder pain evidently.

I usually cheat and use parboiled rice, it won&#x27;t become a sad mush.

Why in the hell is this considered...technical?