Running Gas Range Without Burner Cap?

[David Stone]

Greetings everyone.  I hope you've all been well.

I've been getting into cooking with my wok, and I'm trying to find ways to concentrate the flame of my gas burner to get more heat to the bottom of the wok.  
I've come across this Wokmon gizmo, which gets good reviews.  But it's pretty expensive.
There's one blogger who just removes the cap from the burner on his range.  The flame comes straight up from the middle hole of the burner base.
It seems like it could be pretty dangerous, so I did some googling.  Although many people say it's fine, I've seen a couple of people who say that by changing the direction/concentration of the flame, it could cause some parts to overheat, with bad results.  Of course, these guys seems to be in the business, so it sounds like they know what they're talking about.

Any thoughts from the brain-trust here?

[Mking143]

Greetings everyone.  I hope you've all been well.

I've been getting into cooking with my wok, and I'm trying to find ways to concentrate the flame of my gas burner to get more heat to the bottom of the wok.  
I've come across this Wokmon gizmo, which gets good reviews.  But it's pretty expensive.
There's one blogger who just removes the cap from the burner on his range.  The flame comes straight up from the middle hole of the burner base.
It seems like it could be pretty dangerous, so I did some googling.  Although many people say it's fine, I've seen a couple of people who say that by changing the direction/concentration of the flame, it could cause some parts to overheat, with bad results.  Of course, these guys seems to be in the business, so it sounds like they know what they're talking about.

Any thoughts from the brain-trust here?

I had not heard of the WokMon, but it looks like it would work well to get that "wok hei". I can't help you on the gas burner question, but I think the gadget at $90 would be less costly than fudging up your range.

[vernonator]

I would think it would depend upon how your burner cap works. We have a Thermador cooktop and the "cap" is a metal star that sits on top of the burner orifice and just spreads the gas out. If you take it off the ignitor does not work (its at the edge of the star) but otherwise the gas just comes straight up instead of getting spread out and then lit. So for mine, other than using a lighter to start the flame it works just fine.

[Woodenfish]

If someone were to tell me that it could cause some parts to overheat I would perform a simple test by placing a pan upon it and look at what happens to the flame. If it’s spreading out like normal I would assume it would be okay. By looking at the burner assembly material you can also tell that the flame temperature of natural gas is too low to create issues with the burner otherwise it would not be used. Personally, I think you will be fine but test it yourself momentarily before committing.