The original non-stick pan

Time-tested, versatile, durable, fun to use--and cheap too. Why the wok is the only pan you really need.

July 12, 2006|By Carol Mighton Haddix, Food editor


Toss them out, said Grace Young, who doesn't own non-stick pans. The Chinese cooking expert and co-author (with Alan Richardson) of "Breath of a Wok," cooks almost everything in her battery of woks.

And she wishes that you would do the same.

Young is a firm believer in the wok. It's not just due to her culinary roots in China. The wok, she said, is the most versatile pan in the kitchen.

She uses her woks for non-Chinese food--bacon and eggs, for example. She even fries steaks in it. "I'm the Imelda Marcos of woks," she said.

Young explained her obsession during a class, "Wok Mastery at Home," that she taught last fall at Sur La Table on Walton Street.

"Yes," she admitted with a smile, as she stir-fried sliced ginger, releasing its fragrance into the air, "this is an anti-non-stick-pan class."

If you walk into Woks `n' Things in Chinatown, you'll discover a world of woks hanging on one wall. Choose from carbon-steel woks with two small ear handles or a longer arm handle. Rounded woks or flat-bottomed woks. Domed covers or squared covers. Then there are the bamboo baskets that turn a wok into a mean steaming machine, the strainers and stirrers and long, weaponlike chopsticks used by professional Chinese cooks.

Owner Ken Moy will lead you back to the wall and point to the one he recommends: a 14-inch-diameter, 14-gauge carbon-steel version with a long wooden handle. (A 16-inch is too big for most home stoves, he said.) It's a basic model for $28. You'll have it for the rest of your life.

Take it home. Season it. Start cooking. Stir-fries, yes. But also sauteed onions, braised beef, smoked ribs, deepfried chicken, simmered fruit, boiled shrimp and steamed puddings. Anything you cook in a skillet you can cook in a wok.

Moy and Young are not the only ones who treasure woks.

"Ask us which pan we would want if we were cast away on a desert island, and there's no question," wrote Barbara Grunes and Virginia Van Vynckt in "Wok Every Day."

"The wok's deep, rounded shape distributes heat well and makes it the ideal all-purpose pan."

Think about that shape a bit. No wonder it has been the Chinese pan of choice since the beginnings of the Han Dynasty in 206 B.C., according to Young. It's so practical when compared to our small saucepans and shallow skillets. The flame reaches around and up the gently sloping sides, heating the pan all the way to the top. Frying can be done on the sides of the wok, as well as the bottom. Or, turn the heat lower, move the food up the sides, and you have an instant holding area. The just-cooked food keeps warm, and you can add new ingredients to cook on the bottom of the pan.

With the high sides of the wok, the ingredients can be tossed with abandon. Think of it as your chance to really let loose at the stove.

Pursuing patina

But to allow those vegetables and meats to move freely, the wok needs patina. Patina, according to Webster's, is "any thin coating or color change resulting from age." But how to get an instant patina on a wok? After all, we want to start cooking now, right?

Young has a quick method: After scrubbing off the factory coating that always comes on every wok (with soap, water and a scrubber) and drying it over a flame, she swirls in two tablespoons of vegetable oil, heats it over high heat, adds sliced green onions and ginger root and stir-fries them on medium heat for 15 minutes, pushing the food up the sides of the pan to the rim.

"Old-fashioned Chinese cooks feel the scallion-ginger mixture cleans the wok of its metallic taste," she said.

The interior of the pan absorbs the flavored oil, and begins its long nonstick life. The more the pan is used for stir-frying or deep-frying, the more nonstick it becomes.

Other experts, such as the late Barbara Tropp, suggest a series of steps to begin the coating process. In "The Modern Art of Chinese Cooking," she wrote: "Set the wok over high heat until it is hot enough to evaporate a bead of water on contact. Dunk a wadded lint-free rag or a thick clump of dry paper towels into fresh corn or peanut oil, then wipe the oil-soaked cloth evenly all around the inside of the hot wok, from the crown to the very center, slowly and deliberately driving the oil into the metal."

The oil will smoke and the wok will start to blacken. Then, she wrote, let it cool completely, wipe away any excess oil, then repeat the process two to three more times. (It's best to do this with the windows open and an exhaust fan running.)

Eventually, as the patina accumulates over time, the wok turns black all over, and that's good.

"They all age differently, just like us," Young said.

Moy now carries a new preseasoned variety of wok in his shop, but said it is not as heavy as the other woks he sells.

Whether you buy a preseasoned wok or season it yourself, the new patina must be protected, Young said. Avoid boiling water or cooking with vinegarbased sauces in the pan at first.