Why do some foods have to be cooked only when the pan is really hot? I like fried rice. When I try to make it myself, though, it never turns out the way restaurants make it. Restaurant fried rice almost has this sort of "smell-you-can-taste" that's not directly part of the rice. It's like part of the steam. I'm probably not making sense, but I remember being told that fried rice tastes best when friend on a really hot pan.

Why is this so? What happens when foods are cooked on something less hot? (e.g. friend rice, steak)

A link: http://www.shiokfood.com/notes/archives/000018.html


  One of the reasons that restaurant-made fried rice has that smoky flavour is the high temperatures and the seasoned carbon steel woks that we use.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wok_hei has very good explanations about it. Let me sum of it up:

The geometry of the wok is very important:


better use of the surface area
ability to shallow fry big items and deep fry small items with small amounts of oil.
intense heat for low amount of fuel


The temperature is also very important:


caramelization (or http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maillard_reaction)
carbon steel, cast iron, stainless steel and others have different properties in terms of heat capacity and heat conduction.