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My mom doesn't cook bhunai - she's pushed for a low oil household since I was a kid and is extremely health conscious verging on "crunchy".

I've also done bhunai with electric stovetops and ceramic cookware like Dutch ovens and green pans and gotten close enough to an authentic taste - the marginal differences that exist are due to differences in ingredients in the US (eg. lower milkfat percentages, onions instead of shallots, different cultivars of vegetables, etc) and some inexperience of non-Westerners with Western cookware.

It's a very solvable problem. For example, the Indian restaurants my parents like and feel taste "authentic" use electric stovetops as well in the back, but discriminate on ingredients and masalas.

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Yeah, my induction range will get a carbon steel wok really fucking hot really fucking quick.

Like, I can't really stir-fry on max because my range hood can't keep up and I set the smoke detector off. Outside of crappy rentals, I'm pretty sure electric ranges here are up to whatever, high-heat cooking wise.

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Yep! My SO's Vietnamese and we've both been able to cook pretty decent Viet and Korean (Hallyu wave is a thing) food with electric stoves despite her being used to LNG and charcoal in VN.

The marginal difference in taste is literally just due to certain cultivars not being available here. Ofc, a half decent Vietnamese sourced nuoc mam solves everything but those are available at our Costco.

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