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Cooking Hints and Tips

Caring for a Wok

Before you use your wok, there are things you should know about the care and feeding of your wok.

Seasoning a Wok

Traditional carbon steel woks are the best conductors of heat. Foods won't stick to a well-seasoned wok and you can use less oil for stir-frying. To season the wok, wash with warm water and a mild dishwashing soap. Dry well. Coat the inside with vegetable oil and heat over medium-high heat for about 5 minutes. The wok will begin to darken. Let cool, wash and dry again. Heat over a hot burner until completely dry to prevent the wok from rusting. After each use, wash with hot, soapy water. never clean with harsh abrasives. Dry well over a hot burner. if you like, wipe the wok very lightly with oil to seal, but keep in mind that excess oil in the bottom of the wok will become gummy.

Seasoning the Wok

Only iron and steel woks need to be seasoned. Stainless steel woks do not need this treatment as they are far less porous than iron or steel woks. However with stainless steel woks, more oil is required to prevent the food from sticking.

Seasoning a steel wok enables foods to glide smoothly over the cooking surface of the wok. In a properly seasoned wok one should be able to make perfect omelets. If the omelet even sticks ever so slightly, then the wok is not properly seasoned and should be re-seasoned.

There are two methods for seasoning the iron or steel wok. After purchasing the wok, wash it out thoroughly with detergent to remove the surface grease which is applied to keep the wok from rusting while in shipment. Instead of grease some woks are coated with varnish coating and is difficult to remove. Bicarbonate of soda should be boiled in the wok to rid the surface of this coating. When the cooking surface of the wok is free of anti-rusting coatings, apply a thin coat of polyunsaturated cooking oil to the surface of the wok. Heat the wok up over a very high cooking flame for three or four minutes until the oil begins to smoke. Reduce the heat and keep the wok over low flame for the next half hour. From time to time brush some of the oil up around the sides of the wok to season it. At the end of half an hour the wok is ready to use.

Another more thorough method of seasoning a wok is to brush polyunsaturated cooking oil on the cooking surface of the wok and then place the wok into an oven at 150'C. for four hours. The oil in the wok will become pooled while heating in the oven, so about every hour or so, take your brush and brush the oil up around the sides of the wok and continue heating.

New woks may cause a slight metallic taste to the first two or three dishes that are cooked in it, but after use, the metallic taste disappears.

General Wok Cooking Instructions

Always check to see if you have all the ingredients on hand before preparing meals.

Cut up your meat and vegetables, marinating any that require this process. Set aside for cooking, if you are cooking several wok dishes at the same meal, prepare all of them before cooking any.

Place oil in wok, heat until oil just begins to smoke.

Stir fry your meat, onions, or garlic together. Then add other ingredients accordingly.

If a gravy is desired, use a little corn starch (about 1 tablespoon) dissolved in 1/3 cup of water. Stir this mixture vigorously and pour into your wok on top of your cooked food. Mix thoroughly. Your gravy should be just the right consistency. In case it is too thick, add hot water a tablespoon at a time to thin gravy out. If the gravy is too thin, mix up more corn starch solution and repeat process.

If you are cooking several wok dishes at the same meal, and are worried about keeping them all warm, heat your oven up to 150'C. and store cooked dishes in it until eating time. Maximum storage time is about one hour. DO NOT store cooked leaf green vegetables in this manner as they will turn yellow. Instead, leave those in an uncovered wok and reheat at meal time. If you have an electric hot tray, it is excellent for keeping dishes warm.

Caring for and Storing the Wok

A properly seasoned wok should not be scoured with abrasive material such as steel wool. After cooking foods in the wok, it is best to run very hot water into it and clean the surface of the wok with a bamboo brush or plastic scour. Dry the wok thoroughly with a paper towel and store for future use. Some gourmets will place a small amount of oil on their fingertips to re-coat their woks to keep them in top cooking condition.

Eventually through repeated usage, a dark brown film will develop in the wok. The wok is now truly seasoned. This film is essentially carbon and is not harmful to one's health. The bottom of the woks, the part that touches the cooking flame of the stove should definitely be scoured over occasionally to free it of collected residue.

If one has the misfortune to accidentally burn food in the wok, it will be necessary to take steel wool and scour out the burnt material and then re-season the wok once again. Each time that one has to scour out the wok with abrasive material, then one should re-season the wok.

Stainless steel woks sometimes stick when used to cook omelets or for stir-frying meats. To overcome this problem, one can spend five minutes to "season" the wok before use or spray a coating of lecithin on the surface of the wok to allow for easy gliding of the foods. Lecithin is sold commercially under several brand names as "non-stick" cooking aids.