All of Your Wok Questions Answered (Patreon)

This past week’s AMA was all about cooking in woks — seasoning, rust, burner power, induction vs. gas, wok hei, tossing technique, and how to make wok cooking work on a normal home stove. We got a lot of great questions, so I cleaned up the Q&A portion into a readable transcript below in case you want to revisit anything without scrubbing through the video.

If you’d like to join future AMAs and submit questions of your own, you can do that by becoming a Frienji of Kenji here on Patreon.

Why did you choose super-nitride carbon steel instead of titanium for the wok?

Wok cooking is very different from Western pan cooking. With a Western pan, the pan sits flat on the burner and the goal is to spread heat evenly across the whole surface. Western burners are designed to diffuse the flame so the bottom heats edge to edge.

A wok burner works differently. Instead of spreading heat evenly, it concentrates heat in the center. You want the bottom very hot and the sides progressively cooler. When you toss food, it moves through that hot column of air above the burner, which helps drive off moisture quickly. Wok cooking is all about getting moisture off the food as fast as possible.

Because of that, the material matters. Carbon steel is ideal for a wok because it’s not a very good heat conductor. That means the heat stays concentrated where the flame hits instead of spreading out. You get a hot zone at the bottom and cooler zones up the sides, which is exactly what you want.

Cast iron behaves similarly in terms of heat conduction, but it’s more brittle. To make a cast-iron wok durable enough, you’d have to make it thicker, and then it would be too heavy to toss food in. Carbon steel can be made thinner, so it’s strong but still light enough to handle.

The titanium pan we make with Our Place is a completely different design. It has a steel outer layer, an aluminum core, and a titanium cooking surface. The titanium surface is treated to create a micro-texture that produces what’s called the lotus effect — liquid beads up instead of sticking. That makes it very durable and fairly nonstick (though not as slick as Teflon.)

That kind of construction works great for Western pans, but it’s not ideal for a wok. Aluminum spreads heat evenly, and with a wok you don’t want that. You want the bottom hot and the sides cooler, so carbon steel is still the best material.

The wok we designed uses a process called super nitriding. The steel is treated in a nitrogen-rich environment under high heat and pressure. The nitrogen infuses into the surface, making it harder, smoother, and more resistant to rust. Our process creates a nitrided layer about twice as thick as traditional nitriding.

It also makes the surface less reactive, so acids affect it less and food sticks less easily. You still get the advantages of carbon steel, but with easier maintenance.

It’s more expensive than a basic carbon-steel wok, and a cheap carbon-steel wok will still work great. I used one for years. But if you want something that’s a little more durable and forgiving, the nitride treatment helps a lot.

What’s actually happening when you season a wok, and why is it different from cast iron?

Cast iron skillets and carbon steel woks both need seasoning, but the goal is different.

With Western skillets, seasoning means building up layers of polymerized oil. When oil gets hot, it breaks down and forms a plastic-like coating that bonds to the metal. Over time those layers build up and make the pan more nonstick.

That works well with a skillet because the pan heats fairly evenly and you usually avoid cooking very acidic foods in it.

With a wok, that approach doesn’t really work. The bottom gets extremely hot while the sides stay cooler, so the metal expands unevenly every time you cook. That makes it hard for thick layers of seasoning to stay attached. They tend to flake off.

On top of that, wok cooking usually involves adding sauces at the end, and those sauces are often acidic. Acid breaks down seasoning, so you can’t maintain thick layers the way you can with cast iron.

So with a wok, seasoning isn’t about building up polymers. It’s about creating an initial layer of black oxide on the steel, which protects it from rust and helps food release more easily.

How do you season a raw carbon-steel wok for the first time?

When you buy a raw carbon-steel wok, it usually has a dull gray color and a coating of machine oil to keep it from rusting during shipping. The first thing you want to do is scrub that oil off thoroughly with hot water and soap.

After that, you heat the wok until the metal changes color. As the steel heats, it turns from silver to blue to black. That color change means the surface is oxidizing, which creates a stable protective layer.

If you have a gas burner, the easiest way is to heat the wok over high heat and rotate it so every part of the surface gets hot. If the handle is removeable, you can also do it in the oven at high heat for an hour or so.

If you’re using electric or induction, you might only be able to blacken the bottom, and that’s fine — that’s where most of the cooking happens anyway. You can also use a blowtorch to heat the sides if you want to get the whole surface.

Many modern woks come pre-seasoned, including the nitride wok I designed, so you can cook with them right out of the box.

How should you care for a wok after cooking? Do you need to re-oil it every time?

After cooking, I always rinse the wok, wash it if needed, and then put it back on the burner.

The reheating step isn’t really about seasoning — it’s about drying it completely. Even if you wipe it with a towel, there’s still moisture on the surface. Heating the wok drives that moisture off so it doesn’t rust.

Once it’s dry, I rub in a very thin layer of oil.

If you use your wok every day, this isn’t that critical. But if you’re storing it in a cabinet or hanging it up where there’s humidity in the air, that thin coat of oil protects the steel from rust.

You don’t want a thick layer of oil. Too much oil will get sticky over time. You want to rub some in, then wipe it out so it looks almost dry.

The heat helps with that too — warm metal lets the oil spread thinly and evenly.

What if your wok gets rusty? Is it ruined?

Rust isn’t a big deal with carbon steel. It looks scary, but it’s easy to fix.

You can scrub the rust off with steel wool or a scrubber, wash the wok, dry it, and then reheat it and re-season it the same way you would when it’s new.

Carbon steel is very forgiving. You can always strip it down and start over.

The nitride wok is less prone to rust, but even with raw carbon steel, rust doesn’t mean the wok is ruined. It just means it needs to be cleaned and seasoned again.

Do you need a high-powered burner to use a wok? What about butane, induction, or home stoves?

The ideal setup for wok cooking is a high-output gas burner, because wok cooking really benefits from intense heat concentrated in a small area. Traditional wok burners use jets that point toward the center so you get a very hot zone at the bottom and cooler zones up the sides.

That said, you don’t need a restaurant burner to cook good food in a wok. You can still cook great stir-fries on a normal home stove — you just have to adjust your expectations a little.

With a typical home gas stove, the biggest limitation is power. You’re not going to get the same level of heat, so you may need to cook in smaller batches and give the pan more time to recover between additions. Overcrowding is the biggest mistake people make when cooking on a weaker burner.

Portable butane burners can actually work surprisingly well. A lot of them put out more focused heat than a typical home range, and because the flame is concentrated, they can do a good job heating the bottom of a wok. They’re also useful if you want to cook outdoors or if your kitchen ventilation isn’t great. I look for a butane burner that puts out between 12,500 and 15,000 BTU/hr, like the Iwatani 35FW

Induction can work, but it depends on the wok. Induction only heats the part of the pan that’s in direct contact with the burner, so with a round-bottom wok you won’t get much heat up the sides. A flat-bottom wok works better on induction, but the heat pattern will still be different from gas.

Electric coil and glass-top stoves are probably the hardest to use for wok cooking, mostly because the heat response is slower and the burners don’t concentrate heat the way a flame does. You can still cook with a wok on them, but again, you have to cook in smaller batches and give the pan time to get hot.

The main thing to remember is that wok cooking isn’t just about having the hottest burner possible. It’s about managing moisture and heat. Even on a modest stove, if you keep the batches small and let the wok stay hot, you can get very good results.

Why is high heat so important for wok cooking?

Wok cooking is all about evaporation. When food goes into the wok, especially vegetables or meat, it releases moisture. If the pan isn’t hot enough, that moisture just sits there and the food steams instead of stir-fries.

When the wok is very hot, the moisture evaporates quickly, which lets the surface of the food get hot enough to stay dry and cook fast. That’s what gives you the flavor people associate with stir-frying.

When you see food jumping out of the wok over a powerful burner, that’s not just for show. As the food moves through the hot air above the burner, more moisture evaporates, and that helps keep everything from getting soggy.

At home, you won’t always get the same effect, but you can get close by cooking smaller amounts and letting the wok stay very hot between batches.

Can you get wok hei at home?

You can get some of it, but not exactly the same as in a restaurant.

Wok hei — that slightly smoky, charred flavor you get from restaurant stir-fries — comes from a combination of very high heat, rapid evaporation, and a little bit of atomized oil burning as it hits the flame.

Most home burners just don’t put out enough heat to fully replicate that. But you can get some similar flavors by using carbon steel (the metal itself imparts flavor), and making sure to add your sauces around the edge of the wok instead of drizzled over the center. (That seared/cooked sauce flavor is a vital part of wok hei). If you are up for it, you can also use a high-powered butane torch to bring fire to the food in the wok, no matter what kind of burner you are cooking on. You can read more about wok hei in my New York Times piece here (warning: NYT paywall).

Outdoor burners, propane burners, or high-output butane setups can get closer to restaurant heat levels, but even on a normal stove you can make excellent stir-fries if you pay attention to technique.

Do you need a round-bottom wok, or is flat-bottom fine?

Round-bottom is traditional, and it works best over a real wok burner because the flame wraps around the sides and creates those heat zones.

At home, flat-bottom is usually more practical. It sits securely on a normal stove, and you still get most of the benefits of a wok shape.

The important thing isn’t really the bottom shape — it’s that the wok is made from the right material and that you’re using it over enough heat.

If you have a powerful burner and a wok ring, round-bottom is great. If you’re cooking on a home stove, flat-bottom is usually the better choice.

Is nonstick ever a good idea for wok cooking?

Generally, no.

Nonstick coatings don’t handle very high heat well, and wok cooking often involves temperatures that are higher than what nonstick pans are designed for. You also want to be able to use metal utensils, scrape the pan, and toss food around, which isn’t ideal with nonstick.

There are some situations where nonstick makes sense — like eggs, omelets, or very delicate foods — but for most wok cooking, carbon steel is the best choice.

It can handle high heat, it’s durable, and it develops a surface that gets better the more you use it.

Can you cook with a wok on induction, and how is it different from gas?

You can absolutely cook with a wok on induction, but it behaves differently from gas.

With gas, the flame is there whether the wok is touching it or not. The heat rises in a column, so even when you’re tossing food, it’s still passing through that hot air. That’s important for dishes where you want wok hei — that smoky, slightly charred flavor you get in stir-fries, fried rice, or chow fun.

That flavor comes from a few things. Part of it is the food interacting with the carbon steel itself. Part of it is sauces hitting very hot metal and superheating around the edges. And part of it is oil vapor igniting when it hits the flame. It’s similar to what happens on a grill when fat drips onto the coals and flares up — that combustion adds flavor.

On induction, there’s no flame, so you lose that part of the process. You can still cook great food, but it won’t taste exactly the same.

Another difference is that induction only heats the pan when it’s in contact with the burner. In wok cooking you often lift and toss the wok, so if you’re used to gas you have to adjust your technique a little and keep the wok in contact with the surface more.

If you’re using induction, what setting should you use?

Induction burners work differently from gas. With gas, when you turn the knob, you’re controlling how much heat energy is being delivered. With induction, many burners are trying to maintain a specific temperature instead.

Some induction burners also have speed settings like slow, medium, and fast. Those are actually closer to the high-medium-low on a gas burner, because they control how quickly energy goes into the pan.

For wok cooking, what matters most isn’t temperature — it’s heat flux, meaning how fast energy is going into the pan.

So on induction, you usually want to preheat as hot as the burner will go. If the burner has a fast setting, use that. Once you start cooking, you can turn it down if the recipe calls for lower heat, but you still want to start with maximum power.

Induction is actually more like an oven in that it tries to hold a steady temperature, while gas just keeps delivering heat. That’s why the settings don’t translate exactly between the two.

What if your home burner doesn’t get hot enough?

A lot of home ranges aren’t ideal for wok cooking because the heat is spread out too much. Some burners have a diffuser that spreads the flame, which means the center of the wok doesn’t get as hot as you want.

If the sides of your wok are getting sticky, it’s often because food and sauce are climbing up the sides and burning where the heat isn’t strong enough to evaporate moisture quickly.

There are a few ways to fix this.

You can use something like a wok dome or heat concentrator that focuses the flame toward the center. Some burners let you remove the diffuser so the flame shoots straight up, which works better for a wok.

Another good option is a powerful portable butane burner. Those often work better for wok cooking than a standard home range, because the heat is more focused.

Very high-BTU outdoor burners aren’t always better. Some turkey fryers put out huge amounts of heat, but they spread it too widely, so they actually work worse for wok cooking. With a wok, where the heat goes matters more than how much there is.

If you’re worried about gas fumes, you can cook outdoors, or just use a portable butane burner under your range hood the same way you would with a normal gas stove.

Do you need a wok ring? What does it do?

A wok ring is just a metal stand that sits on top of your burner so you can use a round-bottom wok.

Traditional wok burners have a built-in ring, and the wok sits down inside it so the bottom is close to the flame. Most Western stoves are designed for flat pans, so a round-bottom wok won’t sit properly without a ring.

If you’re cooking on a normal home stove, a flat-bottom wok is usually easier. A wok ring can help, but it also raises the wok farther from the flame, which sometimes makes heating worse instead of better.

They’re useful in some setups, but they’re not required.

Why do people say BTU isn’t everything for wok cooking?

BTU/hr is a measure of how much heat a burner can produce, but it doesn’t tell you how that heat is delivered.

For wok cooking, you want the heat concentrated in a small area, not spread out across a big ring. A burner with lower BTU but a tight flame can work better than a huge burner that spreads heat everywhere.

What you really care about is heat flux — how much energy is going into the bottom of the wok, and how quickly.

That’s why a good butane burner or a focused gas burner can outperform a much bigger burner that isn’t designed for wok cooking.

How do you toss food in a wok without throwing it everywhere?

The goal of tossing food in a wok is to encourage the evaporation of surface moisture. That high toss in the air keeps the food moving and encourages its surface to dry out a bit as it comes back down and hits the intense heat zone at the bottom of the wok. Really, stir-fries should be called "toss fries."

The motion is more of a push-and-pull than a flip. You push the wok forward slightly, then pull it back toward you while lifting the handle a little. The curve of the wok makes the food slide up the far side and then fall back down.

You don’t need a lot of force. In fact, using too much force usually makes things harder to control. Start with small amounts of food and practice with something like dry rice or beans if you want to get comfortable with the motion.

Can't get the hang of it? Don't worry. A spatula works just fine, especially on home burners where you don’t want the wok leaving the heat too much. The key is to really scoop and lift the food and let it tumble down through the air to create plenty of space for evaporation.

Can you use soap on a wok?

Yes. Soap is fine.

The idea that you can never use soap comes from cast iron, and even there it’s a little overstated. Modern dish soap isn’t going to strip seasoning the way old lye soaps did.

With a wok, you’re not trying to build up thick layers of seasoning anyway, so washing it with soap when it needs it is completely fine.

The important part is drying it thoroughly afterward and rubbing in a very thin layer of oil if you’re storing it.

Do you need to oil the wok every time after cooking?

Not every time, but it’s a good habit.

The main reason to heat the wok after washing is to make sure it’s completely dry. The oil is there to protect the surface from moisture in the air.

If you use the wok every day, it’s less critical. If it’s going to sit in a cabinet for a while, that thin layer of oil helps prevent rust.

You don’t want a thick coat. Put a little oil in, rub it around, then wipe it out so it looks almost dry.

What’s the biggest mistake people make when cooking with a wok at home?

Overcrowding the pan.

When you put too much food in at once, the temperature drops and everything starts steaming instead of searing. That’s the number one reason people don’t get the flavor they expect from stir-fries.

Cooking in smaller batches makes a huge difference, especially on a home stove.

The other common mistake is not preheating long enough. A wok should be fully hot before you add oil, and the oil should be hot before you add food.

If you start cooking too early, everything sticks.

Do you need special oils for wok cooking?

You want an oil with a reasonably high smoke point, because wok cooking uses high heat.

Neutral oils like peanut oil, canola, soybean, or grapeseed all work well. You can use olive oil, but not extra-virgin at very high heat.

The exact oil isn’t as important as making sure the wok is hot enough before the oil goes in.

Is a wok useful for things other than stir-frying?

Definitely.

A wok is one of the most versatile pans you can have. You can stir-fry, deep-fry, steam, boil, braise, even make soups in it.

Because of the shape, you can use a small amount of oil to fry, and you can move food in and out of the hot zone easily.

It’s not just for Chinese cooking either. You can use a wok for all kinds of things once you get used to how it works.