Hey everyone! I just got a new Wok from Amazon this week. It was a recommendation from Souped Up Recipe’s cook Mandy.

 In this video, we will be taking a look at the unboxing of the package as well as how to properly season a carbon steel wok in an oven. 

 Woks are used in a range of Chinese cooking techniques, including stir frying, steaming, pan frying, deep frying, poaching, boiling, braising, searing, stewing, making soup, smoking and roasting nuts.  Wok cooking is often done with utensils called chahn (spatula) or hoak (ladle) whose long handles protect cooks from high heat. 

The wok’s most distinguishing feature is its shape. Classic woks have a rounded bottom. Hand-hammered woks are sometimes flipped inside out after being shaped, giving the wok a gentle flare to the edge that makes it easier to push food up onto the sides of the wok.  Woks sold in Western countries are sometimes found with flat bottoms—this makes them more similar to a deep frying pan. The flat bottom allows the wok to be used on an electric stove, where a rounded wok would not be able to fully contact the stove’s heating element.  A round bottom wok enables the traditional round spatula or ladle to pick all the food up at the bottom of the wok and toss it around easily; this is difficult with a flat bottom. With a gas hob, or traditional pit stove, the bottom of a round wok can get hotter than a flat wok and so is better for stir frying. 

 Most woks range from 300 to 360 mm (12 to 14 in) or more in diameter. Woks of 360 mm (14 in) (suitable for a family of 3 or 4) are the most common, but home woks can be found as small as 200 mm (8 in) and as large as 910 mm (36 in). Smaller woks are typically used for quick cooking techniques at high heat such as stir frying (Chinese: 炒; pinyin: chǎo). Large woks over a meter wide are mainly used by restaurants or community kitchens for cooking rice or soup, or for boiling water. 

 Seasoning or curing is the process of treating the surface of a cooking vessel with heated fat or oil in order to produce a corrosion-resistant and stick-resistant coating. It is required for cast-iron cookware and carbon steel, which otherwise rust rapidly when heated in the presence of oxygen and water, even in small quantities such as in drippings from dry meat. In addition, food tends to stick to unseasoned iron and carbon steel cookware. Some cast-iron and carbon steel cookware is pre-seasoned by manufacturers, but most needs to be seasoned by the users.