The Physics of Fried Rice

[ilamont]

The mathematical model Hu and Ko developed isn't just a fun curiosity; it should also prove useful for industrial robotic designs.

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't remember if it was for home or industrial use, and I don't remember if fried rice was one of the options.

Fried rice is one of the hardest Chinese dishes to cook at home, especially if you don'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/dicing required for prep.

ETA: Found some articles and clips about the tech:

https://www.scmp.com/tech/innovation/article/1808963/worlds-...

http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201805/17/WS5afd263fa3103f686...

https://www.digitaltrends.com/home/robot-cooking-machine/

[thaumasiotes]

> Fried rice is one of the hardest Chinese dishes to cook at home, especially if you don'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/dicing required for prep.

I found this funny. That's a fair call on the slicing/dicing, except I'm pretty sure the traditional way to make fried rice is to throw in whatever leftovers you already have to hand.

So if you're already cooking other Chinese food, fried rice is just a mostly-free leftovers dish. It works as part of the entire Chinese-food cultural complex; it's harder to slot in to a schedule of foreign food, where every element of it has to be prepared specially.

(Of course it's popular in restaurants now, and they must make it in a consistent way. But you don't need to.)

[tfolbrecht]

Lifehack for rice friers: Use leftover rice or make sure the rice is dryer than fresh out the pot.

I boil it, then throw it in the oven or microwave it, stir a few times so there's less moisture. If the rice grain is too moist the outside of it wants to stick to the pan instead of itself.

A lot to be said about automation (or anything sort of skilled work) and making sure your inputs are consistent.

[wincy]

I started using lard and stopped wanting restaurant fried rice. Ingredients go a long way in taste.

In fact, lard makes almost everything taste amazing.

[ska]

> especially if you don't have a high-temperature gas range

Some people suggest extra effort to accommodate for not having the right heat source: https://www.seriouseats.com/2020/02/hei-now-youre-a-wok-star...

[mc32]

Teposnyaki make some good fried rice. They have high heat but they don’t have the luxury of tossing with the wok.

Their technique is different, but I don’t think it comes out worse for it.

In order for the rice to have a chance, it has to be kinda dried out (day old in the fridge) and clumpy.

[0xff00ffee]

Oh god this brings back traumatic memories: When I was getting my degree in culinary arts at Bristol (Boston, MA) in the mid-80's I had "Professor Wong", 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, "You burn rice, you fail!" 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.

[pcurve]

Lol what a delightful story :)

[thaumasiotes]

Huh. This whole thing appears to be about how the motion of the wok affects the fried rice.

But at the only restaurant I'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.

"The physics of fried rice" seems to overestimate the scope of the study a bit.

[asutekku]

I think “cafeteria” is the key word in here. They most likely do not have the time & resources to do it how they would do it in a high end restaurant.

[zbaylin]

Happy to see my school getting mentioned on HN. Dr. Hu has a TEDx talk called "Confessions of a Wasteful Scientist" (https://www.ted.com/talks/david_hu_confessions_of_a_wasteful...) that talks a bit more about research he has done in this vein.

[bfung]

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”.

Just wanted to share some fried rice wisdom.

[Apofis]

All of a sudden I got super excited and wanted to go buy a wok, something I've wanted to do for a while, even started looking on Target... then I realized I have an electric range.

I could get an outdoor propane stove, can't wait for it to get warmer.

[Magi604]

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.

[s_ngularity]

You should try a Vietnamese place if there’s one near by you. The ones around here at least don’t seem to skimp on the meat as much

[thedance]

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

[bilekas]

When physics and food meet.. It's a dinner made in geometrical heaven, and shoulder pain evidently.

[rzmnzm]

I usually cheat and use parboiled rice, it won't become a sad mush.

[ruffyen]

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

[lacker]

It is physics. Have a look at their published physics paper, it's quite technical.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2019.062...

[jjeaff]

I would hazzard a guess that quite a lot of engineers are into cooking because it can be a highly technical and scientific process that involves chemistry, physics, and engineering with delicious results.

And the highly technical paper in this post attests to that.

[wnevets]

If it is not, why would it matter? Hacker news always has non technical post on its front page.

[robbrown451]

I personally find it pretty amazing that, as they mention, no one has succeeded in making a robot that can do it effectively. That is certainly a technical issue. It seems to me something that is highly automatable.

The fact that it is something that physicists are studying and it is published on Ars Technica seems to me to be enough to justify it being technical enough for Hacker News (which generally doesn't have to be technical per se, but just intellectually interesting to technically oriented people)

[anonsivalley652]

What the Discovery channel, I mean ArsTechnica, calls "science" shall not be questioned! ;)

Also it has "Royal Society" in the paper so it has carte blanche to pick seemingly frivolous topics if they have merit. Furthermore, very good cooking is mostly scientific with some art. French Guy Cooking's Alex has more of a lab/workshop than a kitchen because he's so fanatical to improve the art and science of food.