Buying My First Wok

Jing and I started My Chinese Home Kitchen nearly two years ago. We are close friends, with a shared interest in Chinese cuisines, especially authentic home cooking. You may be surprised to learn I just purchased my first wok.

As most of our fans know, I first met Jing a little over two years ago. She was orphaned, and had been forced to drop out of high school because she had no one to pay her tuition. Jing is very talented, and very intelligent, she could have gone to university, but was instead forced to work in a factory. She worked 6 days or more each week, for 12 hours a day, to earn about $500 US per month.

Jing’s dream has always been to become a Chinese cuisine chef. However, she could not earn enough to save for the tuition, and there are no jobs that would let her work part-time while finishing her education. Since we are not related, I could not just give her money. So, I had to create a job for her that would put her talents to work on a flexible schedule that allowed her to attend school and have enough money after tuition payments to afford good housing, food, and healthcare.

I am a foodie. I like authentic cuisines with natural ingredients, and Jing wants to become a chef. So, starting My Chinese Home Kitchen with Jing was an obvious solution. Working together, she could attend culinary school and learn Chinese cuisine, and I could learn how to cook Chinese food at home. I have cooked most of JIng’s recipes. There are a few for which I cannot find ingredients: Celtuce, for instance, is pretty difficult to come by here in the Texas Hill Country. For most of her recipes, I can buy fresh or order dried ingredients online. I’ve cooked all of them using a 10-inch cast-iron skillet, or a 5-quart cast-iron Dutch oven. So, why am I buying my first wok after two years of working together?

Skillet versus wok

My all-time favorite pan is my 10-inch cast-iron skillet. I have four cast-iron items: the 10-inch skillet, a flat griddle about 9 inches across, a 5-quart Dutch oven, and a very large Dutch oven with tripod legs and a cast-iron lid shaped to hold hot coals. I can fry, saute, braise, stew, simmer, even bake over a campfire with these four pots. The 10-inch skillet gets the most use.

A few months ago, I obtained copies of Irene Kuo’s The Key to Chinese Cooking, and several of Grace Young’s books on wok-cooking and stir-fry. One of the first things I learned was that many Chinese expatriates in the US use a skillet instead of a wok. The skillet, griddle, and Dutch ovens have flat bottoms, which work well on a Western gas or electric stove. Furthermore, cast-iron is the original non-stick surface. I don’t use anything coated with teflon or other non-stick surfaces. Over time, the coatings break down and become little toxic additives in food. Further, non-stick pans cannot handle high heat. So, why am I buying my first wok?

Well, there are several reasons I decided to buy my first wok.

Frying and stir-frying are easier in a wok

First, while there are many Chinese cooking techniques (braising, stewing, simmering, pan frying, and steaming, to name a few), many of Jing’s recipes are designed for pan-frying or stir-frying in a wok. (Stir-frying is cooking quickly over high heat, and is really more about tossing food than stirring it around.)

I soon learned that cooking a stir-fry in a flat-bottom skillet is, to borrow from one of the quotes in Grace Young’s Breath of the Wok, more like pushing ingredients around the pan. It is challenging, even on the relatively low heat of a typical American home gas range, to toss and turn all the ingredients fast enough to avoid uneven cooking.

A wok, on the other hand, has sloping sides, and with a little practice, one can easily flip all of the ingredients at once. When I am frying a Western dish, such as bacon and eggs, or home fried potatoes, or a steak, it’s pretty easy to work with the flat-bottom skillet, as I tend to cook items on one side, then turn them over to the other side and that’s it.

Cooking is faster in a wok

Second, cooking several dishes in sequence is faster with a wok.

A few months ago, I decided to impress a couple of friends by having them over for a Chinese dinner. I did most of the preparation (chopping and measuring) ahead of time. However, since I had only one skillet to work with, I had to cook each dish, serve it, clean the pan, heat it and oil it, then start the next dish. This took all night.

If you watch a Chinese restaurant chef in action, they cook hundreds of dishes in an evening, most taking no more than a minute or two. I mistakenly thought this was all about having the ingredients prepared ahead of time. However, the pan adds to the time. Simply put, heating that cast-iron skillet hot enough to start each dish takes six to seven minutes on my stove. American cast-iron pans are thick and heavy. For a meal with three dishes, that adds 18 to 20 minutes of time, just waiting for the pan to get hot enough.

Fortunately, my guests were good sports. We never made it to the dining table, but they pulled up stools at my kitchen counter and we talked and sampled each dish together while we waited for the pan to heat up for the next dish. But I was a little disappointed. I had really wanted to have a sit down meal. So, I began to think more seriously about buying my first wok.

The concave shape and sloping sides of a wok

Third, the shape of the wok is ideal for stir-frying.

The sides have some heat and function as cooking surface when you are tossing ingredients in the pan. By contrast, the sides of a skillet serve only to keep food in the pan. The ease of tossing ingredients makes for even cooking, with no burned spots, or one side darker than the other.

Chinese chefs use a motion called pao to toss food in a wok. This takes a lot of practice, and is essential for professional chefs because they work on stoves that generation 100,000 to 200,000 BTUs of heat. If they did not keep the food constantly tossing, it would incinerate in the pan. Home stoves are not nearly so hot, so without this skill, it is easier to toss and turn ingredients in the wok, because the sides work with you.

The first portion of Jing’s culinary education was spent outdoors, working with practice woks filled with sand, to learn these techniques. In this video, you see students practicing with Cantonese-style woks (two small metal handles, like ears):

Unofficial time comparison, wok to cast-iron skillet

The 14-inch wok I purchased is made from thin carbon-steel. It heats and cools very quickly, up to temperature in about 1 minute and 45 seconds. It is also very lightweight. For my next dinner party, I was able to cook three dishes in sequence in just a few minutes. (Also, I had a cast-iron skillet to serve as a second pan, and I used that to make Jing’s Sautéed Mushrooms with Broccoli while I cooked Sweet and Sour Pineapple Pork Cantonese and Pork Fried Rice in the wok. We were able to sit down at the table, with all the dishes hot and served simultaneously.

On the typical home gas stove, the pan loses heat when ingredients are added. The burners are not hot enough to keep the pan at temperature. The thickness of the pan affects the time required to get back to ideal cooking temperature. Often times, I have to make a dish in stages to allow the pan to reheat. Let’s compare the times for this using pork fried rice:

These times are based on my stove, which can boil water only slightly faster than a boy scout with a magnifying glass.

Buying your first wok

A wok is central to Chinese culinary culture. The wok has been in use for thousands of years. On the whole, it is the most versatile pan you will ever own.

For most of the cooking done in a Western kitchen, you need at least one skillet (cast iron is better than stainless steel, especially when cooking at high temperatures), three or more sauce pans in various sizes (preferably stainless steel “waterless” cookware), and at least one large pot for soups, pastas, making sauces, and cooking foods such as corn on the cob. A double boiler is also very handy for steaming, making hard- or soft-boiled eggs. If you don’t have a lot of time for cooking, a crock pot is essential.

For Chinese cooking, if you have a wok with a domed lid and a wok spatula or ladle, you can cook almost anything. Add a bamboo steamer and a steam rack, and you have all you need for cooking anything on our website. The only other item you will need is a rice cooker, which is also very versatile, or a saucepan for making rice (though this can be done in a wok too). Finally, a wire skimmer is a very helpful tool, especially when blanching or deep-frying.

Jing’s advice, which I confirmed with several other knowledgeable sources, is a 14-inch carbon-steel wok with a flat bottom and a long wood handle (also called a northern-style wok). That’s big enough to make a meal for four, and anything larger will be too big for the typical household range. Flat bottom woks are essential if you have an electric stove. If you have a gas stove, you can consider the round bottom wok, but you will also need a wok ring to put around the burner and stabilize the wok. I like cast-iron cookware, but a good cast-iron wok is very thin (much thinner than a Western skillet) and can shatter if dropped, so I went with the carbon-steel.

Seasoning a wok

Carbon steel and cast iron need to be seasoned in order to have a non-stick surface. I see people make a big deal of this, but if you own any cast-iron cookware, you should already know how to do this. Seasoning the pan is simply a matter of applying a coat of cooking oil and heating to a high temperature. This causes a chemical change in the oil, forming a polymer which bonds to the metal.

If you boil water or cook acidic foods like tomatoes in a wok after it is seasoned, you will have to season it again. This is not a big deal in my opinion.

To season a wok, follow your manufacturer’s directions. First, wash a new wok thoroughly with soap and water to remove any residues from the manufacturing process. Then dry the wok. Then heat it with a small amount of oil with a high smoke point (Canola, Peanut, Corn, Vegetable, etc.). While it is heating, use a paper towel to spread the oil evenly over the interior surface. (I like to use a wooden spoon to push the paper towel around, so I don’t burn my fingers.) Before the first use, let the wok cool and repeat this process three times.

After each use, you do not need to use soap and water to clean the wok. Just use clean tap water and a dish sponge. If there is anything stuck to the wok, use a coarse steel wool to scrub it gently. Then dry the wok and store it with a light coat of cooking oil.

You can see my wok is already developing a patina from heating and seasoning. This is normal and desirable.

Do not allow carbon-steel or cast-iron to rust. If it does rust, you must remove the rust with steel wool. Then you will have to season the pan. Properly seasoned, your pan will last a lifetime.

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