Using Weak Stoves

As much as I'd like to use gas stoves all the time, or have a crazy outdoor burner, it's not always practical. And the place I'm currently at only has those super weak electric coils. Using a weak stove definitely won't replicate the sear or stir fry of a stronger stove, but there's a few things that could help.

Use a heavier pan or wok

A heavier wok will probably have more material, and more material in turn translates to higher heat capacity. Using stoves to stir fry is all about effective heat transfer. The higher the heat capacity of the wok, the longer the effective heat transfer will continue.

Think of the heat capacity of the wok like a bucket of energy; the higher the heat capacity, the bigger the bucket. The stove is a faucet trying to pour energy into the bucket; the stronger the stove, the more output in this faucet. When you add in ingredients to the wok, heat is going to be transferred from the wok to your ingredients, effectively cooking your ingredients. If there's not a lot of energy your bucket (i.e. the heat capacity of the wok), your ingredients aren't going to cook all the way. Then, your ingredients are going to rely on the energy coming from the stove to cook. But the stove is weak, so this will be ineffective.

This directly leads into the next idea:

Get the wok or pan really really hot

Using a heavy wok isn't enough if the wok doesn't have a lot of heat stored in it. Leave the wok on the weak stove for a really long time so you can be sure that the bucket of energy is filled to the brim. Then, when the ingredients are added, there's plenty of heat in the wok to cook the food, and we don't need to rely on the energy coming from the stove as much.

Heat transfer

The above points assume effective heat transfer from the wok to the ingredients. If the heat transfer is low, then the above points don't really matter. However, this is pretty hard to account for when purchasing a wok, or when preparing to cook, and it can generally be assumed that the higher the difference in temperatures between the wok and the ingredients, the higher the heat transfer. So we can mostly disregard this.