everything you ever wanted to know about your wok and more
I've been obsessed with seasoning woks and cast iron skillets lately and figured out a thing or two from trying out all the different advice I've read online. Here's a synopsis:
On Seasoning:
-- I recommend seasoning with Crisco shortening and then vegetable oil and then mineral oil in that order. Mineral oil is good if you plan to store your piece because it never goes rancid. Vegetable oil is recommended by The Wok Shop but it tends to be sticky if not done perfectly. The disadvantage to using mineral oil is that it has a low smoking point (somewhere in the high 200's) so it smokes a lot more. Also some people say that you don't cook with mineral oil so you shouldn't apply it to your wok. However, I feel fine doing this if I get food grade mineral oil. I'd only do mineral oil if planning to store the piece for years because of the low smoking point. Fats that are solid at room temperature is best for seasoning. (I read lard is best but I don't know where to get any but...
Cheap but GOOD
This wok works really nicely even on my wimpy electric stove. It's shipped with the longer handle unscrewed, but it goes in easily and feels sturdy once attached.
What surprised me was how well the seasoning instructions work. I've resolved not to buy Teflon pans any more, because I have a tendency to burn food, which spoils the coating (mmmm perfluorooctanoic acid) The coating works as well as a Teflon pan - with a cheap plastic wok chuan (spatula with a large semicircular blade), fried rice and eggs came off the surface easily. The coating endured cleaning with regular dish detergent and plastic scouring pad. It was surprising because I grew up in a Malaysian Chinese family and we've never done this "seasoning" thing with our woks. I emailed my mum to tell her about it.
The seller included 2 accessories, a large bamboo spoon and a thing that I think is meant for a cleaning instrument (but since it looks like a backscratcher I'm using it as one =D ), and a...
Simple, fast and vesatile
I am the type of person who abhores fast food has little time to cook but misses the flavors of home.
Before I had this wok, I would make for of five different dishes for the week and end up clean piles and piles of pots and pans.
With the 16 inch wok, I can go from steaming food with a bamboo steamer, to boiling, to stir-frying and deep frying with relatively little clean up.
Although the size seems huge, it's nice to be able to stir-fry a large amount of food without dropping any and tall enough to not get burned by splattering oil.
Since it's made of carbon steel, it can be heated to a very high temperature without you worrying about the carcinogenic properties of non-stick coatings.
Love it.
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