A local Tucson company is making these cool, giant woks out of repurposed plow disks. Isn’t there something in the Bible about pounding swords into plow shares, or spears and pruning hooks, or something like that? I guess this is sort of that in reverse, with more of a culinary angle.
By way of full disclosure, I’ve known one of the guys in this company for about a decade, although we’ve seldom spoken or even seen each other. He and his wife used to hold a literary happy hour at a different bar every month. Somebody should pick that idea back up. It was a lot of fun.
I’ve been told the woks may eventually come with recipes crafted by the chef at Tucson’s Mountain Oyster Club, an exclusive dining establishment that had carpet emblazoned with the shapes of cow testicles back when it was located downtown on Stone Avenue. There were also posters of pin-up girls in the bathrooms. I have to be careful, though, because I angered a lot of the club’s members when I wrote about the place for the Arizona Daily Star more than a decade ago.
Anyway, the woks look pretty cool. The company also makes other stuff. More on that here.
This article appears in Aug 11-17, 2011.
Turning old plow disks into giant woks (aka cooking disks) is NOT a new idea. Such plow disks have been in use all across Mexico for many years.
All across Chihuahua and Sonora families can be seen BBQing meats and veggies in a plow disk placed on top of hot coals or burning wood. They call it cooking “en el Disco” (cooking in the disk).
Mexican ladies can also be seen making hand-stretched tortillas on the inverted plow disks (concave side down) placed atop steel drums or concrete BBQs loaded with glowing hot coals.
Call the new American invention “El Disco” and lots of Mexicans will know exactly what it is. It’s the Mexican countryside style. Only the US selling price is likely to seem foreign to them.
Wow, thanks for letting me know. That’s worth a story in and of itself!