Flat or round base wok?

[Lavendar01]

Until now I've been using a normal non stick wok and the coating has started to come off. Food hasn't been great as my stir fries would release water (wok not retaining enough heat?), that pretty much all I'd cook. I now want to buy carbon steel wok (creating restaurant quality at home), and experiment with oriental asian cooking.

Now the dilemma is not knowing which to buy, flat base or round base. I have normal 4 gas hobs (similar to photo attached), one slightly bigger. Would make sense to get the flat base BUT I've read online round base retains heat better and soaring. For this I'd need a wok ring which I've heard can me hit n miss.

Can anyone share their experience of using carbon steel wok?

Thanks!

Bump ...anyone?

I have a flat base skottsberg stainless steel wok & find it cooks brilliantly, they do carbon steel ones (though not cheap ) they are very high quality

I used to live in China (a few decades ago) and at the time never saw a flat bottomed wok. Never even heard of them, nor a wok ring for that matter. People just put the wok on the gas burner directly.

Surely flat bottom or wok ring are only needed if you have a completely flat surface like an electric stove (? Not an expert here, but just never seen the need).

I later lived in India for several years, and ended up much preferring karhai/kadai to a wok. They are actually derived from the wok, but a bit smaller, making them easier to both store and handle. I have several, both round and flat bottomed, and use them pretty much daily, round bottomed far more than flat bottomed.

Round bottomed you need far less oil and cooking liquid.

The pan I use the most is very thick stainless steel with a copper bottom, doesn't have any patina on the inside and I can clean with steel wool and can chuck it in the dishwasher. Second most used is thick carbon steel which I seasoned myself, must of course wash gently by hand and dry by heating briefly on the stove top after washing to prevent rust.

As I'm sure you know, a non stick wok is a ridiculous idea. For most Chinese food the pan needs to be hotter than non stick will allow.

Btw, if your food is releasing water, there are several ways you could be going wrong:

• Pan not hot enough to start with (sometimes saw woks actually heated to red hot in street markets in China)
• Too much food added at once, which lowers the temperature
• Too much food being cooked in the pan
• If you're cooking something that will be fairly big in the amount of food, don't hesitate to do it in stages, take out the cooked ingredient and set aside, cook the next bit, then recombine all the cooked ingredients in the wok at the end.

E.g. I relatively often cook a dish learnt from a Vietnamese-Chinese friend where you fry thinly slivered ginger till crispy, set aside, fry very thinly slivered green capsicum till just cooked, set aside, (not with the ginger as it will lose its crispiness), then add cook a slivered clove of garlic, then immediately add sliced chicken, cook, then add capsicum back in, add fish sauce and soy sauce and water if it looks too dry, then add in the ginger back in just before serving it out. Total cooking time about 5 minutes. You can see here the advantage of the pan being round bottomed because you need to add a tiny bit more oil at each stage when you cook the new ingredients and this way the amount can be minimal.

Hope this helps!

@ohdrearydrearyme that was so helpful. I was thinking of returning the wok but changed my mind now :) I'm also intrigued to see what a karhai/Kadai looks like. What metal is that ?

Would you say a 12" wok is good size, for a normal size gas burner, or should I swap for a 10" one?

I know this is slightly off topic, but do you have any beginner recipes to share, that are very much the foundation of wok cooking? I feel like that will help me build my confidence and experience.

Thanks!

Kadai are usually stainless steel or cast iron or hammered iron. I have all three.

They look just like a wok but slightly thicker metal and usually with two metal handles that you need to use oven gloves to touch when cooking as they get very hot.

Size:
Rather than just declare some size the best, I would instead ask myself the following:

• Do I already have lids that will fit with it?
• Am I also going to use it as a steamer and if so will what I want to use as a steamer fit within it?
• Am I going to use other pans on the stovetop at the same time and will they all fit on without crowding each other out?
• How heavy is it? A good non stick utensil lasts basically forever, so consider how hard moving it around will be on your body or wrists when you're older and/or frailer.

Tips and absolute foundational stuff:-)
Don't just stir fry!
A good meal, even for just 1 or 2 people, has a variety of textures, and can include steaming, boiling and braising, not just stir fry. It also reduces the time pressure, because you're not trying to cook everything at breakneck speed.

Absolutely foundational and crucial:

• Heat your wok first before you put in oil! Check temperature as follows before putting in the oil. Shake a couple of droplets of water from your fingertips into the pan. Only when the surface is hot enough that the droplets form into little balls and zoom around the pan is it hot enough to put in oil. This will help prevent food from sticking. Obviously do not put the oil in until all the water has evaporated or you will get hot oil exploding everywhere!
• if using a round bottomed pan, when you've just put in oil and are about to add ginger or garlic, don't swirl the oil around first, let it sit in a little pool in the bottom and add your aromatics into that. Swirling oil up the sides will probably just give you burning oil on the sides. After you added the aromatics, THEN swirl round and add the next ingredients (one needs to appreciate that this is really only seconds here but the pan is very hot and things burn quickly).

• A very basic recipe that works for pretty much all greens, such as cabbage Chinese cabbage, bok choy, gay lan broccoli, etc. This is fast, easy, accentuates their inherent sweetness and is very common in home cooking. Have a colander or strainer ready in the sink, and a half glass of water ready to put into the wok at the last minute.

Fill your wok with a reasonably large amount of water - enough to blanch your greens. Add salt if you want, but you don't have to. Bring water to a boil. Use this time to cut up your vegetable. Slice one or two cloves of garlic ready while you're at it, and set that aside.
When the water is boiling, add your vegetables and blanch them. They should turn bright green. Harder veggies like broccoli need a little longer, but do not overcook. As soon as they are bright green, tip vegetables and water into the colander, discarding the hot water down the sink. Run cold water briefly over to stop them cooking further.
Wok goes back on the flame, make sure all the water is evaporated, then add oil, some salt, cook the garlic briefly, then tip in your greens, stir around, add in your water, then serve.
You can drizzle with sesame oil or oyster sauce if you like.

Made with Lau is a good place to start on YouTube. It's Cantonese cooking, so other types of Chinese cooking are not covered, but he covers a lot of basic stuff really well. He's a retired chef and this shows in that he uses oyster sauce to add sweetness more often than home cooks, and he thickens sauces with cornflour more than the average home cook that I know ever would, but those are the only quibbles I have.
Happy cooking