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I very rarely cook vegetables in butter. Actually, the only one I can think of off the top of my head is broccoli rabe. I guess I'm more of an extra virgin olive oil girl.

When I do a vegie saute I use either veg oil or most often, olive oil. Sometimes depending on my mood and the vegie involved I'll add butter to the oil for an added flavor dimension. I rarely use straight butter to saute because it burns so easily but it's really just a matter of taste. I use bacon fat the same way. Don't know why you had such a bad outcome with the olive oil in the wok unless you just had too much in there. I'm not really a fan of wok cooking I really prefer the saute pan.

Depends on what you cook. For stuff like squash and zucchini, I prefer butter, but for asparagus..well, actually for asparagus, I prefer to boil for 2 minutes. Spinach is excellent with butter (but I usually boil it for 10 seconds).

I cook most of my veggies with olive oil except for asparagus, and mushrooms. I use butter for those.

I've never really thought about it, but I vary depending on the veggies. For our spicy garlic rappini I start with a hot pan, add EVOO, toss in the vedge and gnocchi, it smokes and the gnocchi get a nice sear. Then I toss, season, and throw in a dollop of butter to finish.

For our saute of trumpets, carrot and shallot, and snap peas I start by adding the trumpets to a hot dry pan. Toss in some butter, which smokes. Let the mushrooms get nice and dark brown then throw in the snap peas with a little EVOO. Finally throw in the carrot and shallot with seasoning and toss a few times to let everything get nice and hot.

We cook most stuff in EVOO at the restaurant, but pan seared fish we use a 90/10 blend of soybean and EVOO. If you're going to cook at wok level heat with butter you really do need to be fast though. you've got mere seconds to cook with before burning starts.

Eureka! @AyeEat, you discovered the reason that cooking is so much fun and is challenging and rewarding, both when it works and when it doesn't. One of the amazing things about cooking is discovering how the taste and flavor of one food can be so affected by changing one little detail of preparation: the amount of heat applied; the type of heat applied (dry oven heat, intense broiler/grill heat, steam, etc.) butter vs. olive oil vs. peanut oil; how it's cut (or not); what it's being served with; what it's being cooked with; raw vs. blanched; fresh vs. frozen; how it's seasoned before, during and after cooking; the point at which any herbs are added; what kind of liquid is added and when; what your astrological forecast predicts; and on and on and on.

The thread you referenced was not for veggies: it was for greens--spinach, kale, collard, turnip, and whatever else that's leafy. I saute spinach in butter, kale in olive oil, collard greens with ham fat (and stock) because I like those combinations of flavors--my taste buds don't think kale works well with butter, but with olive oil and garlic--wow.

Technically, you cooked your first batch of vegetables in butter in a wok: they weren't stir-fried. To properly stir-fry, whether you do it in a wok or a skillet or a pot, you introduce your vegetables, either all together or one kind at a time, to almost-smoking oil over very high heat. The very high heat necessary for a proper stir-fry would have turned your butter bitter and burned your butter to the high heavens.

Butter contains water, which contributes steam, which helped cook your asparagus the first time around. Oil contains no water, so I'd guess your raw asparagus was fried the second time around; blanching the asparagus first would have helped.

Use our comments as a guide, not a cooking bible. Just don't stop learning what works for you and what doesn't.

thanks everyone!

Tons of tips for veggies, I'll have to start eating more now.
And apparently I need to learn how to use my wok, I'll work on that :)