You can use metal utensils with a carbon steel wok, not just wood and silicone, but it must always be thoroughly dried, to prevent rusting. 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. [2] Wok cooking is often done with utensils called chǎn ( spatula) or sháo ( ladle) whose long handles protect cooks from high heat. The uniqueness of wok cooking is conveyed by the Cantonese term wok hei: "breath of the wok". Alip, Eufronio Melo (1959). Ten Centuries of Philippine-Chinese Relations: Historical, Political, Social, Economic. Alip & Sons. p.97. Young & Richardson (2004), p.38: A typical U.S.-made cast iron wok can weigh more than twice that of a Chinese cast iron wok of the same diameter

With this in mind, in my attempt to determine the very best, I reviewed a selection of woks, judging them for durability, weight, aesthetic, ease of use and maintenance, the feel of the handles when cooking, and depth of flavour (you really can tell the difference on this front). Roasting: Food may be cooked with dry heat in an enclosed pan with lid. Whole chestnuts are dry roasted by tossing them in a dry wok with several pounds of small stones. Stewing: Woks are sometimes used for stewing though it is more common in Chinese cuisines to use either stoneware or porcelain for such purposes, especially when longer stewing times are required. Small woks are for hot pot, particularly in Hainan cuisine. These are served at the table over a sterno flame. If you love Chinese food, you must have tasted a dish or two that is cooked in a wok. Do you know that a wok can be used for cooking many dishes, not just for stir-fry? Learn more about what a wok is, how to use it and how to care for it with this guide.

Public wok racing is only practiced once a year at The "World Wok Racing Championships" (German: Wok-WM, German pronunciation: [ˈvɔk.veːˌɛm], lit. Wok Worldcup) which is aired as special edition of Raab's show TV total on the German television channel ProSieben. The network used to declare these broadcasts as sporting events. Under German law that allowed the network to treat the massive corporate sponsorship of the event as incidental advertising which didn't count against Germany's strict rules regarding time limits for TV commercials. After a Berlin court ruling in 2009, however, the shows have to be labeled as an infomercial, since – unlike a regular sporting event – the races are explicitly staged for the TV broadcast, and there is strong evidence that the profits of the event sponsorship directly benefit the network. [2] World Wok Racing Championships [ edit ] Venues [ edit ] This type of stove allows foods to be stir-fried at a very high heat, sometimes hot enough to deform the wok itself. Professional chefs in Chinese restaurants often use pit stoves since they have the heating power to give food an alluring wok hei. [ citation needed] Gas [ edit ] Young, Grace; Richardson, Alan (2004). The Breath of a Wok. New York: Simon & Schuster. pp. 4, 14, 34, 36–40. ISBN 0743238273.

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Wok with lid

López-Alt, J. Kenji (2022). The Wok: Recipes and Techniques. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 9780393541229. Every month or so, if you have time, it is recommended to re-season your wok. Heat it up and then use a piece of kitchen paper to apply a thin layer of vegetable oil. Repeat three to four times and then wash and dry before putting it away, as suggested previously. How is a wok used in Chinese cooking? Wok is a Cantonese word; the Mandarin is Guō. The wok appears to be a rather recent acquisition as Chinese kitchen furniture goes; it has been around for only two thousand years. The first woks are little pottery models on the pottery stove models in Han Dynasty tombs. Since the same sort of pan is universal in India and Southeast Asia, where it is known as a Kuali in several languages, I strongly suspect borrowing [of the word] (probably from India via Central Asia)--kuo must have evolved from some word close to Kuali. The Cantonese phrase "Wok hei" ( simplified Chinese: 镬气; traditional Chinese: 鑊氣; Jyutping: wok 6 hei 3) literally, the "breath of the wok", refers to the distinct charred, smoky flavor resulting from stir-frying foods over an open flame in Cantonese cuisine. [16] The second character (simplified Chinese: 气; traditional Chinese: 氣) is transliterated as qi ( chi) according to its Standard Chinese pronunciation, so wok hei is sometimes rendered as wok chi in Western cookbooks. Wok hei refers to the flavor, taste, and "essence" imparted by a hot wok on food during stir frying. [2] [17] It is particularly important for Cantonese dishes requiring high heat for fragrance such as char kuay teow and beef chao fen. Out of the Eight Culinary Traditions of China, the wok hei concept is only encountered in Cantonese cuisine, and may not even be an accepted underlying principle in most other Chinese cuisines. [16] Pit stoves originally burned wood or coal but are now more typically heated by natural gas with the burner recessed below the stovetop. In areas where natural gas is unavailable, LPG may be used instead. With the adoption of gas and its less objectionable combustion products, the chimney has been replaced by the vent hood. [ citation needed]