I just spent a long time today doing a salt and oil scour on my own first carbon-steel wok, whose seasoning I totally screwed up. It's a lot of work! I'm going to give it a few more scours and...
I just spent a long time today doing a salt and oil scour on my own first carbon-steel wok, whose seasoning I totally screwed up. It's a lot of work! I'm going to give it a few more scours and then gingerly attempt re-seasoning - I'll have to see what she says about it first.
If you're struggling with seasoning (@bonedriven tagging you since you mention it too), I cannot recommend anything more than using your wok to make stovetop popcorn. I actually got this advice...
If you're struggling with seasoning (@bonedriven tagging you since you mention it too), I cannot recommend anything more than using your wok to make stovetop popcorn. I actually got this advice from one of Grace Young's cookbooks -- iirc she says she uses this as a "shortcut" to building up patina when she's going to gift a wok to a friend. The popcorn popping does a fantastic job of spreading the oil out around the wok, and the existing seasoning doesn't even need to exist for it, since you don't need to worry about popcorn sticking. Plus, you get a batch of popcorn at the end! A wok is actually the perfect vessel for stovetop popcorn, I genuinely prefer it over anything else, even those whirIey pop machines that caught on in the US (or at least in the Midwest).
In general, I think home cooks get really anal about seasoning their woks when they don't need to. Unless there's something burnt on or rust or something else so bad it's interfering with your cooking, you probably don't need to be super precious and scrub off whatever seasoning you've already got even if it sucks. Just keep cooking with your wok. If you're especially worried your seasoning is weak, focus of stir-frying over other methods, but tbqh if you're a Westerner buying a carbon steel wok you probably were planning on stir-frying a lot anyway. You don't need to put a ton of time and energy into it! I promise you, Chinese home cooks don't -- years of patins get built up over years, but you can cook well even in a wok with a very weak seasoning. It's all gotta start somewhere!
Yeah, after watching some of her videos I think maybe I'm doing okay with it this round. It had flaked up really badly (every time it cooled it looked like ancient paint chips coming off), but I'm...
Yeah, after watching some of her videos I think maybe I'm doing okay with it this round. It had flaked up really badly (every time it cooled it looked like ancient paint chips coming off), but I'm hoping to avoid that this time.
I don't usually eat popcorn, but I might make an exception for a cause. I did learn you don't use sea salt in a salt-oil scour unless you want to be as-salted by popping salt, yikes! (I'm stupid. It should've occurred to me there'd be moisture in the crystals.)
I'm just going to let it ride for a while and see how it turns out. Today: mapo dofu tofu.
Alton Brown has a bit where he pops popcorn in a wok w/tin foil over the top. Some of the best popcorn I ever had. Bonus points for powderizing your salt in a coffee/spice grinder (careful with it...
Alton Brown has a bit where he pops popcorn in a wok w/tin foil over the top. Some of the best popcorn I ever had. Bonus points for powderizing your salt in a coffee/spice grinder (careful with it though - you can get A LOT more powderized salt in a teaspoon than you can regular table salt - stunningly easy to over do it).
I just bought a lid for my wok and hold it on with my other hand while I shake it personally, but the tin foil thing is smart. I'm also generally too lazy to grind up my own popcorn salt even...
I just bought a lid for my wok and hold it on with my other hand while I shake it personally, but the tin foil thing is smart. I'm also generally too lazy to grind up my own popcorn salt even though I've seen it recommended -- notably in this video by Brian David Gilbert in which he also adds in Laoganma chili crisp. But tbqh I'm a lazy person, so we usually just use regular salt plus melted butter.
I feel you. I spent an age stripping my wok last weekend and made a mess of the seasoning - not enough oil - so stripped again, repeated, and made the same mistake again. I'm seriously considering...
I feel you. I spent an age stripping my wok last weekend and made a mess of the seasoning - not enough oil - so stripped again, repeated, and made the same mistake again. I'm seriously considering buying a pre-seasoned wok as I don't think I can handle another scouring session.
Just double checking - are you sure this was the problem? It is very hard to use too little oil when seasoning, and if you do that it shouldn't be making a mess, basically just... nothing will...
not enough oil
Just double checking - are you sure this was the problem? It is very hard to use too little oil when seasoning, and if you do that it shouldn't be making a mess, basically just... nothing will happen. Was it sticky, by any chance? If so, that's a sign that you're using too much oil, not too little.
Yes, pretty sure I wiped too much off - but I'm definitely not an expert. The surface was streaky and definitely not sticky, with the patina very thin in places. Cooked fine once or twice but even...
Yes, pretty sure I wiped too much off - but I'm definitely not an expert. The surface was streaky and definitely not sticky, with the patina very thin in places. Cooked fine once or twice but even with gentle cleaning some of the bare steel became exposed.
Not a Wok expert however I cook a lot with cast iron. Are woks not like cast iron where the patina builds over time with use? I see a lot of people on the Internet kind of obsess over getting...
Not a Wok expert however I cook a lot with cast iron. Are woks not like cast iron where the patina builds over time with use? I see a lot of people on the Internet kind of obsess over getting their seasoning perfect when often getting a bit of seasoning to protect the pan from humidity is more than enough to begin cooking with it. Like, some streaming, spotting, and varied coloring is just part of cooking on something with seasoning/patina that's always evolving and changing.
If the patina wasn't sticky to the touch I don't think you over oiled the pan. Oil that hasn't fully polymerized because the coating was too thick is really tacky. It is possible you overheated the pan while seasoning and accidentally burned some of the patina rather than it remaining as a smooth polymer layer.
Maybe try cooking with the Wok a few times and see how the seasoning develops? Because every time you heat it and add oil to start (and it just barely smokes, more like a vapor), you'll be building an additional layer of seasoning.
In my experience it's much easier to season Cast iron through use rather than through direct seasoning. That being said, you could always try building the seasoning on your Wok in an oven similar to cast iron.
Bring your over just to the smoke point of the oil
Buff a very light layer of oil on the inside of your Wok (and I mean LIGHT, you want to be barely lay down atoms). Optionally: After wiping with the oil towel wipe the Wok with a DIFFERENT dry paper towel to take off extra oil (I promise you, there is still oil stuck to the pan at a microscopic level).
Place the Wok in the heated oven for 1-2 hours
Pull it out and allow it to cool a bit so it's safe ish to handle with oven mitts. I imagine woks cool much faster than cast iron since they're thin.
Repeat starting with step 2 and send it back into the oven.
Do this as many times as you want until you like the color you've developed in your Wok.
Yeah seasoning a carbon steel wok is more or less the same as seasoning a cast iron pan, and in both cases people get way too freaked out about it. Pretty much everything in this comment can be...
Yeah seasoning a carbon steel wok is more or less the same as seasoning a cast iron pan, and in both cases people get way too freaked out about it. Pretty much everything in this comment can be applied to a carbon steel wok (though idk about the oven method, as I haven't looked into it -- carbon steel heats up so much faster than cast iron so I suspect the timing would be different in any case). It's very easy to get overly worked up about whether you're doing it right early on.
It's really hard for me to tell from the photo (and I'm also not an expert - I've just seasoned a fair amount of stuff) but if it's not sticky/tacky, then you're probably fine. Don't strip it,...
It's really hard for me to tell from the photo (and I'm also not an expert - I've just seasoned a fair amount of stuff) but if it's not sticky/tacky, then you're probably fine.
Don't strip it, though. There's absolutely no reason to do that. Just keep cooking in it or just continue to season it in thin layers.
I'm actually feeling a little better about not trying to do that again after digging up some of the Grace Young videos, since she just advocates letting it ride and keep on using it and the patina...
I'm actually feeling a little better about not trying to do that again after digging up some of the Grace Young videos, since she just advocates letting it ride and keep on using it and the patina will take care of itself. Hopefully I can at least avoid a flurry of flaking like last time.
I just spent a long time today doing a salt and oil scour on my own first carbon-steel wok, whose seasoning I totally screwed up. It's a lot of work! I'm going to give it a few more scours and then gingerly attempt re-seasoning - I'll have to see what she says about it first.
If you're struggling with seasoning (@bonedriven tagging you since you mention it too), I cannot recommend anything more than using your wok to make stovetop popcorn. I actually got this advice from one of Grace Young's cookbooks -- iirc she says she uses this as a "shortcut" to building up patina when she's going to gift a wok to a friend. The popcorn popping does a fantastic job of spreading the oil out around the wok, and the existing seasoning doesn't even need to exist for it, since you don't need to worry about popcorn sticking. Plus, you get a batch of popcorn at the end! A wok is actually the perfect vessel for stovetop popcorn, I genuinely prefer it over anything else, even those whirIey pop machines that caught on in the US (or at least in the Midwest).
In general, I think home cooks get really anal about seasoning their woks when they don't need to. Unless there's something burnt on or rust or something else so bad it's interfering with your cooking, you probably don't need to be super precious and scrub off whatever seasoning you've already got even if it sucks. Just keep cooking with your wok. If you're especially worried your seasoning is weak, focus of stir-frying over other methods, but tbqh if you're a Westerner buying a carbon steel wok you probably were planning on stir-frying a lot anyway. You don't need to put a ton of time and energy into it! I promise you, Chinese home cooks don't -- years of patins get built up over years, but you can cook well even in a wok with a very weak seasoning. It's all gotta start somewhere!
Yeah, after watching some of her videos I think maybe I'm doing okay with it this round. It had flaked up really badly (every time it cooled it looked like ancient paint chips coming off), but I'm hoping to avoid that this time.
I don't usually eat popcorn, but I might make an exception for a cause. I did learn you don't use sea salt in a salt-oil scour unless you want to be as-salted by popping salt, yikes! (I'm stupid. It should've occurred to me there'd be moisture in the crystals.)
I'm just going to let it ride for a while and see how it turns out. Today: mapo dofu tofu.
Best of luck! I hope the mapo tofu is tasty
Alton Brown has a bit where he pops popcorn in a wok w/tin foil over the top. Some of the best popcorn I ever had. Bonus points for powderizing your salt in a coffee/spice grinder (careful with it though - you can get A LOT more powderized salt in a teaspoon than you can regular table salt - stunningly easy to over do it).
I just bought a lid for my wok and hold it on with my other hand while I shake it personally, but the tin foil thing is smart. I'm also generally too lazy to grind up my own popcorn salt even though I've seen it recommended -- notably in this video by Brian David Gilbert in which he also adds in Laoganma chili crisp. But tbqh I'm a lazy person, so we usually just use regular salt plus melted butter.
I feel you. I spent an age stripping my wok last weekend and made a mess of the seasoning - not enough oil - so stripped again, repeated, and made the same mistake again. I'm seriously considering buying a pre-seasoned wok as I don't think I can handle another scouring session.
Just double checking - are you sure this was the problem? It is very hard to use too little oil when seasoning, and if you do that it shouldn't be making a mess, basically just... nothing will happen. Was it sticky, by any chance? If so, that's a sign that you're using too much oil, not too little.
Yes, pretty sure I wiped too much off - but I'm definitely not an expert. The surface was streaky and definitely not sticky, with the patina very thin in places. Cooked fine once or twice but even with gentle cleaning some of the bare steel became exposed.
How it currently looks
Not a Wok expert however I cook a lot with cast iron. Are woks not like cast iron where the patina builds over time with use? I see a lot of people on the Internet kind of obsess over getting their seasoning perfect when often getting a bit of seasoning to protect the pan from humidity is more than enough to begin cooking with it. Like, some streaming, spotting, and varied coloring is just part of cooking on something with seasoning/patina that's always evolving and changing.
If the patina wasn't sticky to the touch I don't think you over oiled the pan. Oil that hasn't fully polymerized because the coating was too thick is really tacky. It is possible you overheated the pan while seasoning and accidentally burned some of the patina rather than it remaining as a smooth polymer layer.
Maybe try cooking with the Wok a few times and see how the seasoning develops? Because every time you heat it and add oil to start (and it just barely smokes, more like a vapor), you'll be building an additional layer of seasoning.
In my experience it's much easier to season Cast iron through use rather than through direct seasoning. That being said, you could always try building the seasoning on your Wok in an oven similar to cast iron.
Yeah seasoning a carbon steel wok is more or less the same as seasoning a cast iron pan, and in both cases people get way too freaked out about it. Pretty much everything in this comment can be applied to a carbon steel wok (though idk about the oven method, as I haven't looked into it -- carbon steel heats up so much faster than cast iron so I suspect the timing would be different in any case). It's very easy to get overly worked up about whether you're doing it right early on.
It's really hard for me to tell from the photo (and I'm also not an expert - I've just seasoned a fair amount of stuff) but if it's not sticky/tacky, then you're probably fine.
Don't strip it, though. There's absolutely no reason to do that. Just keep cooking in it or just continue to season it in thin layers.
I'm actually feeling a little better about not trying to do that again after digging up some of the Grace Young videos, since she just advocates letting it ride and keep on using it and the patina will take care of itself. Hopefully I can at least avoid a flurry of flaking like last time.