The Wok: Part II

You need to pick the right wok for how you'll be cooking.

There are two materials worth considering for wok cooking: carbon steel and cast iron.  You can find stainless, aluminum, anodized aluminum, tri-ply and all kinds of woks. Don't get any of those. Carbon steel or cast iron are the two that behave properly in the stir fry technique.  Sure you see Martin Yan or Ming Tsai cooking in them on their TV shows. But remember, those are products supplied by the backers of their programs. Circulon for Martin Yan and All Clad for Ming Tsai. In their restaurants, they use round carbon steel woks.

Carbon steel is the recommended choice. It's light, inexpensive, responds quickly to heat adjustments., easy to work with and readily available.

Most modern cast iron woks are not made in the traditional Chinese style. They're thick, heavy and harder to find. But they do have some characteristics worth considering.

And there are two shapes of woks to consider as well: round bottom and  flat bottom. 

When I first got into Chinese food 20 years ago, carbon steel round woks were considered the best choice. It was also about all you could find outside of a Chinatown probably. They work OK on a western gas stove but are not as well suited to the electric coil burners or the various glass cooktops popular today. In all of these cases, you need a wok ring to stabilize the wok on the cooking surface. On electric stoves, the heat transfer is poor to a round bottom wok.

And so flat bottom woks are available too. They've been around longer certainly, but it's only been the last 10-15 years that I've seen a dominant switch to this style in books and so on.

My books from the 70s and 80s don't even mention flat bottom woks. And strongly traditional  cooks like Eileen Yin Fei Lo still recommend round bottom woks in even her current works. But the trend is towards flat bottom woks for western stoves. Grace Young argues strongly for the flat bottom wok in Breath of a Wok as do many online sources.

If you're willing to invest in a specialized burner, I still think a round bottom wok is produces the best Chinese food. I cooked a lot of dishes on a 30,000 BTU outdoor camp burner for years. Even in the winter. The food was worth it compared to what I got cooking on my 12,000 BTU gas home stove.  These guys have some impressive burners ranging from 30,000 on up to 160,000 BTU which is about the heat output of a restaurant wok stove.

Consider that a gas stove is about 33% efficient at transferring heat to a pot. So on my home stove, I'm getting around 4000 BTUs into my wok. Electric stoves are slightly more efficient. So the outdoor stove was giving me about 10,000 BTUs transferred to the wok.

If you're going to stick with common western style home stoves, flat bottom makes a lot of sense. It helps collect and transfer the heat more efficiently because it better matches the design of western stoves.

For cooking on a home stove, a flat bottom cast iron wok is attractive. It gives you the flat bottom, but is generally cast with a complete round interior. Even with that I still think it's not as fun to cook in as a carbon steel flat bottom wok.

I'm currently using a carbon steel flat bottom wok and I use it on a stand alone Max Burton induction burner. Induction gives me high efficiency heat transfer, around 90%. It heats very quickly and quickly recovers its heat when you add food to it. Like gas, induction gives you instant responsiveness to heat adjustments.  And an induction burner is quite reasonably priced.

I'd say this is close to cooking on the outdoor stove. Not quite as powerful but the convenience more than makes up for it and the food quality is quite good.

There are also some specialty wok induction burners shaped for round woks.  Most of these are designed for installing in the counter like a cooktop with higher voltage and wattage than wall current.  There are a few stand alone units for 120 V.  I've ordered this one but it hasn't arrived yet. I'm looking forward to it.