Breaking in a New Wok

Kitchen remodeling this year means that we got a new stove. I really wanted double ovens so my partner and I installed the Verona 36" dual-fuel stove. And, voila! it comes with a 16,000 BTU center burner with a Wok Ring, so of course, my partner had to buy a wok.

First step, season it! It was a little intimidating. Even our friend Sharon who was visiting over Thanksgiving didn’t do it for me. And, well... the wok stayed up in the cabinet for another month. Then “Merry Christmas”, my partner’s cousins bought us two cookbooks (Grace Young’s Stir-Frying to the Sky’s Edge and Fuscia Dunlop’s Every Grain of Rice) plus a bunch of fun Chinese flavors (hot oil, soy sauce, etc.) and ingredients (shiitake, pickled turnips, etc.) and spices (Sichuan peppercorns!, star anise). I have to admit, these are my first Chinese cookbooks despite being of Chinese heritage. But, now I really do want to get my wok cooking!

What’s next? Back to seasoning the wok. Instructions were in the book but YouTube came in handy too:

I also didn’t have peanut oil but fortunately did have other oils. But which one to use? I knew “not olive oil” so, thanks to the InterWebs and Googling “oil smoke points”, I found a site with a list and found that I can use sunflower seed oil.

I also used ginger and regular onions instead of scallions. I didn’t capture any photos while seasoning, but it was a lot simpler than it sounded. Just like life, sometimes things that sound hard are really not terrible once I get over procrastinating and just do it.

Tomorrow I might go get scallions and try it again. Or I might try a recipe. Chinese food anyone?

Day 1: Wok post seasoning

According to Grace Young, two years to go to make it really nicely patina-ed. Good things come to those who keep cooking?

#cooking #chinesefood #woklife