Why is a wok used

If you find that you are wasting loads of oil at the end, a wok prevents an excessive amount of burnt bits from lingering at the bottom of your pan. You know what we mean. The way they congregate in the corners of a deep pot. If you strain out the burnt bits as you see them, the oil will stay cleaner, and then you can use it a few more times before you need to discard it.

The wide opening brings about another advantage with deep-frying in a wok. This gives the oil bubbles the space to dissipate, so no boiling over. So those potentially hazardous and messy situations are now less likely. Steaming is an easy and nutritious way to cook vegetables.

Basically, you cook food on a perforated surface like a steamer basket. The surface is set over simmering water and enclosed. The wet heat steam from the hot water, is trapped by your lid, rendering the vegetables tender and perfectly crisp.

If you set your steamer basket on an ill-fitting pot, be assured that there is a much easier tool you can use. Yep, the wok! The small bottom of a wok makes it ideal for holding the simmering water, without letting it touch the base of the basket. Any water that reaches your basket simply works to get your vegetables all wet. Set your basket of choice over the wok filled with a little water, then cover and steam. When you use your wok to steam foods in the steam basket you must use a wok lid tall enough to cover the steam basket completely.

After some research, I found this lid on Amazon that should fit the bill if you are using a inch wok. This Joyce Chen wok lid is rounded on the top which should be tall enough to cover your bamboo basket. There is a wood handle that is easy to grip and will keep you from burning yourself. The edges of this lid are rounded and should fit perfectly just inside your wok. Warming tortillas used to mean heating them up individually in a frying pan, which never holds more than two small tortillas at once.

This is not the case anymore. We warm tortillas up in a wok. Simply lay them up the sides of the wok. Fit on as many as you can. Smoking foods inside your home may seem a little intimidating.

Do this using a wok and you will see how easy it actually is. Great heat retention. Quick cooking speed. Naturally non-stick. Relatively lightweight. Great for stir-fry veggies. Can handle super high heat. Healthier results. Might overcook food. Prone to rusting.

Needs to be seasoned. May react to acidic foods. Incredibly durable. Dishwasher safe. Sleek, clean look. Excellent heat retention. Quick response to heat change. Oven safe. Great for meats. Prone to sticking. Has to be scrubbed.

Slower cooking. The reality is, chefs should use both a frying pan and a wok for their respective advantages. When reaching in the cabinet, opt for a wok in the following situations:.

Thanks to its deeply sloped walls, the wok heats up super fast and cooks food very quickly. When stir frying veggies. If you uniformly slice and dice your carrots, zucchini, broccoli and other vegetables, a wok will yield amazingly fast and consistent results. The first is that the steamer trays are stackable, multiplying the number of things you can steam at one time. The second is that it comes with its own lid, which is marginally easier to clean than the large, unwieldy lid that comes with our recommended wok.

Regardless of what you use for your steamer setup, the applications are too numerous to mention. For my part, I steam many pounds of vegetables a week, mostly for my kid; I use the steamer for dumplings, as pictured above; I use it for small whole steamed fish or fish fillets; I even use it for custards, like chawan mushi.

Learn more about how to steam in a wok , or get the recipe for Simple Pork and Scallion Dumplings here. When you're talking about wok cooking techniques, "braising" is something of a misnomer.

Rather than the low-heat, moist cooking method that's meant to convert collagen in tough meats to gelatin—what we typically refer to as "braising" in Western cuisines—"wok braising" essentially creates a simmered dish.

While a stir-fried dish might have just enough sauce to coat each morsel of food contained within it, a wok-braised dish will have a decidedly saucy consistency. Think mapo tofu , or the braised eggplant pictured above. If the idea of using a wok for these kinds of recipes reminds you of the old "when all you have is a hammer A wok allows you to jiggle and swirl the contents, while the high, sloping sides contain the sloshing.

Just try to pull that off with a Dutch oven! The other benefit of a wok is that it's very easy to pour a saucy dish out of the wok directly into a serving vessel.

I actually think deep-frying is the kitchen task the wok excels at above all others, but I've placed it this far down on the list because, as great as deep-frying in a wok is, I still deep-fry at home a lot less frequently than I stir-fry, steam, or braise.

The main reason for that has nothing to do with the wok and everything to do with using and disposing of lots of oil , which I'm sure most home cooks share with me. If one were to compare deep-frying in a wok with deep-frying in a cast iron pot or a Dutch oven, one would find the wok to be a far better vessel. It's true that the wok's sloped sides mean you'll need more oil to achieve a comparable depth, but that's the only way in which a wok is inferior. Otherwise, those sloped sides make it easier to hold tools, like chopsticks and strainers, at a variety of angles to manipulate frying food; they make it more convenient to pour out the oil in order to strain or dispose of it, without spills; and they make it less likely that the oil will boil over while you're frying.

But the best part of using a wok for deep-frying is that there's less mess: The flared-out sides of the wok catch a fair amount of splattering oil that the straighter sides of a Dutch oven or a cast iron pan would miss. The relative ease of deep-frying in a wok makes dishes like fried chicken—whether it's kimchi-brined and Southern-fried, as pictured above, or a gonzo Popeye's clone —much more appealing to cook.

Read our guide to deep-frying in a wok for more information, and get the recipe for Kenji's Kimchi-Brined Fried Chicken Sandwich here. This is admittedly kind of a niche use for a wok for the home cook, but it shouldn't be! You are limited only by your imagination and the amount of aluminum foil you have on hand it does require a fair amount of foil.

It's easy to do and perfect for any application that requires a light smoke, whether it's the chicken wings pictured here, delicate proteins like fish fillets, or the tofu skin in our vegan cheesesteak recipe. All you need to do is line your wok with the foil, so that the stuff you're burning to create smoke doesn't mess up the pan's seasoning; top the wok with a wire rack ; then top the rack with the food you want to smoke.

After you've turned on the flame and the stuff in the bottom of the wok has begun to smoke, seal up the whole thing using another sheet of foil, and let it sit for about 30 minutes, which should be just enough time to impart a light smoky flavor to your food.

Read more about how to smoke foods in a wok in our guide, and get the recipe for Tea-Smoked Chicken Wings here.