Then wash the interior with hot water and a soft sponge to protect the patina , and the exterior with hot water and a scrubber sponge. Dry over low heat before storing. Read the article 4 Ways to Cook with Your Wok for instructions on how to steam, smoke, stir-fry, and deep-fry using a wok.
I bought a carbon steel wok at an Asian outlet and washed it with soapy water. I've used it mostly with my steaming baskets but once for a stir fry. I thought I would simply now follow your instructions for seasoning and preparing it.
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Add Private Note. Saved Add to List Add to List. Add Recipe Note. Most Popular. How to use a wok and how to care for a wok by Helen Fan. Woks: An Introduction. Woks have been synonymous with Chinese cooking since the emergence of Chinese cuisine.
They have been used for some years in China for a variety of cooking methods, including stir frying, boiling, and steaming. A wok is a large, thin-walled, round-bottomed, metal cooking pan, and shaped like a shallow bowl with handles.
The addition of a wooden rack and cover transforms the wok into a steamer. Although woks come in sizes ranging from 10 to 32 inches in diameter, a wok that's 11 to 14 inches should suffice for use in a household kitchen.
There is the addition of a metal ring, which is set on top of a gas or electric stove to hold the wok to prevent tipping. Some have a small flat bottom instead of the traditional round bottom, for the same reason. The new versions will get the job done, but the "traditonal" large round-bottomed woks are still, by far, the preferred wok of choice.
Since the essence of Chinese cuisine is to achieve food tenderness through quick cooking to retain the natural taste, flavor, and color of the ingredients, the wok's ingenious unique design makes it a perfect fit in Chinese cooking. Its bottom concentrates heat to achieve 2 objectives: 1 to direct the heat at the food, while sealing in the flavors and allowing food to be cooked evenly, and 2 to allow cooking food quickly with very little oil.
The stir fry cooking technique shifts food around the wok quickly, coating it with oil during cooking, as opposed to using a flat frying pan where a lot more oil is required. Consequently, cooking with a wok is essential for a healthy diet. It also has curved sides to keep in food that is being tossed and flipped during stir frying. Food, when cooked, may be moved up the sloping side of the wok to stay warm without cooking further, while other food is cooked at the bottom.
It is also ideal for deep frying as it requires less oil than any other kitchen cookware to do the job. Woks: Round-bottomed or flat-bottomed? Woks come in two different bottoms, the traditional round-bottomed woks, and the Westernized flat-bottomed woks. Both have their advantages, but there are reasons that the traditional wok lasted thousands of years in Chinese kitchens.
The flat-bottomed woks do not heat as evenly. The flattened area creates a little angle around the bottom that makes it harder to manipulate your cooking utensil.
Food may get caught in this area, becoming overcooked or even burnt due to the lack of movement. This also could present a problem when you clean it afterwards. That little angle also increases the likelihood that you will accidentally scratch the wok while stir frying.
The flat-bottomed woks were designed for better balance on flat American stovetops, especially the electric stove. But there is a simple solution for that. A wok is generally made of iron, copper, carbon steel, or aluminum. Carbon steel and aluminum are the better ones because of their superior heat conductivity, but the general consensus is that carbon steel is, by far, the best material for a wok.
Carbon steel is the most porous, and when exposed to high heat, the pores open up to absorb the cooking oil, contributing to developing the "patina", and then the elusive "wok hay" see below. If you go around Chinese restaurants and ask their chefs the kind of woks they use, an overwhelming majority will swear by carbon steel woks.
The best part is that carbon steel woks are relatively inexpensive to buy. This is definitely not the case for woks. There are now stainless-steel versions of the wok, although it is generally not recommended. Stainless-steel is not a good heat conductor, which defeats the purpose of Chinese cuisine that relies heavily on quick cooking on high heat.
They sure look nice, but would you rather have a nice looking wok, or a tastebud-tickling, mouth-watering gourmet dish? The answer should be obvious. Woks with non-stick coatings are not desirable, either. They all inevitably scratch and food gets stuck to the metal, ruining the taste, smell, presentation of the dishes, not to mention the extra effort needed in cleaning the wok.
In addition, the high heat required for Chinese cooking may eventually damage the non-stick coating. Start by giving your new wok a quick wash, then dry and cover any handles you won't be using with aluminium foil. Then, put the wok on your stove and turn the heat on high. The wok will start to change color as you hold it over the heat, and it'll probably start to smoke.
That's all right — that's residual oils left from the manufacturing process. Heat all areas of the wok completely, turning and tilting it as you go, then set it aside to cool. Give it another wash, then put it back over a medium heat to dry. Once it's completely dry, add a dash of vegetable oil and lower the heat.
Spread it around, and push a paper towel around with a spatula to cover the whole wok as it heats. Once the oil disappears and your wok starts to change color , you can let it cool, wash it, and repeat the process the next time you cook with it. That's it! Most of the time, a super-high temperature means you're going to burn the outside of whatever's in your pan before it's cooked all the way through, and it's this belief that brings us to another common mistake that happens when you switch to a wok: you probably don't have the temperature high enough.
According to Andrew Zimmern , one of the keys to getting those stir-fried vegetables just the right texture is to have the heat very, very high — so high that when you throw your ingredients in, they're going to hard sear.
And that's key, too: your wok should already be hot before you put any of your meat and vegetables in, so there's no slow rise in temperature. Start each dish by putting the wok — and the wok alone — over the heat, and you'll know you're ready to start cooking only when it starts to smoke.
Chef Ken Hom has also specified via The Telegraph how important it is to start with a very, very hot wok and to continue with that high heat. His pro tip? If you're taking your wok off the heat, you're doing it wrong. If you do decide you need to bring the temperature down, use just a dash of water, broth, or rice wine — don't lower the heat.
Cooking with a wok is all about speed, and if you're the type that likes to set the pan on the stove and add ingredients as you cook, you're not doing your wok justice. One of Andrew Zimmern 's key tips is to prep everything in advance, and have it ready.
And that means prepping everything correctly , too. You'll need to pay close attention to how you're cutting your meat and vegetables. Look at it this way. You're going to want to sear your ingredients fast, so that means you're going to want the most surface area you can get. Cut veggies very, very thin, and cut them on the diagonal to maximize the area that's directly exposed to the heat. Chatelaine recommends cutting your meats against the grain, which will help keep them tender.
Finally, one more bit of prep advice from Grace Young via Epicurious : Bring your meat to room temperature before throwing it in, as that will help you cook it more evenly. Choosing the right oil can be tough — there are so many out there, after all, keeping their strengths and weaknesses in mind can be a challenge. But according to Andrew Zimmern , picking the wrong oil for using in your wok isn't just going to make it taste a little off, it'll ruin your whole dish.
That's because different oils start to burn at different temperatures, something MasterClass calls the smoke point. Because you're working with extremely high temperatures, you'll need to choose an oil that has a high smoke point so it holds up against the heat and doesn't break down and burn quickly.
Zimmern suggests oils like grapeseed and peanut for using with a wok, partially because of their high smoke point and partially because they're low in polyunsaturated fat. Why does that matter? Because oils high in this type of fat will burn — badly — and turn whatever you're cooking very, very bitter. If you're just slicing and dicing your ingredients then throwing them in the wok According to chef Grace Young via Epicurious , adding ingredients when they're wet or even damp will lower the temperature of your wok to the point where your food is going to start to steam instead of sear.
And that makes it incredibly important to keep moisture to a minimum. But what about the incredible sauce that's all ready and waiting to go on the stir-fry? It's not stir-fry without the sauce, we know. According to chef Ken Hom via The Telegraph , there's a specific way to cook your ingredients that's going to allow you to manage your moisture correctly: cook your proteins, and drain any extra liquid.
Then add your vegetables , and then — at the very end of the process — add your sauce. When chef Adam Liaw was asked via SBS about the absolute, most important piece of advice he could give when it came to cooking with a wok, he stressed how vital it is not to make a very common mistake.
Even if you do everything else right, and then overcrowd the wok, it's going to turn out awful. The first reason why goes back to moisture. Even if you pat your ingredients dry before throwing them into your wok, they're going to give off liquid as they start to cook. If the wok isn't overflowing, that liquid will evaporate pretty quickly, and that's exactly what you want.
You also want your ingredients to begin to char, and the way they get that nice char is by coming in contact with the bottom of the wok.
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