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How the hell do I clean a wok?
Tilderinos! I've been using a carbon steel wok for about two years. Whenever I have any recipe that involves throwing a sauce in - which is pretty much every stir fry I use it for - I suddenly have an awful time of trying to clean it afterwards. Last night after doing this it was still pretty crusty, and I'm still getting crud off as I wipe it.
If you're not supposed to use soap to prevent ruining the patina, how do you clean it properly? I see all sorts of advice ranging from water to not using water...
You can use soap just fine. The concern comes from older soap that uses Lye, which can damage the coating. Normal dish soap nowadays does not contain any, so it's fine to use.
Generally, the best way I find is to clean it right after use when it's still hot with water, but stubborn residue can absolutely be scrubbed off with some dish soap and elbow grease. Just make sure to dry the wok well afterwards, and potentially oil it a little.
Oh! Christ, that would've saved me like an hour or two of my life over the last two years lmao. I do season it afterwards with a bit of oil, will go give it a proper wash... Thank you!
This also applies to cast iron these days as well. I still generally refrain out of habit, but if something goes nasty I don't hesitate to do a moderate scrub with a dish rag and some soap.
You can use soap (though don't overdo it, less is more), the thing you want to not overdo is abrasion. Use a soft sponge and don't scrub crazy hard. I personally find it easiest if I rinse the wok out with water right after I'm done cooking, since it gets a lot off before it has a chance to get too sticky. Then a quick wipedown later will be more effective.
If something's properly stuck on, you can do a scrub with salt and oil (I can grab the instructions from my copy of Breath of the Wok if you want). This helps get rid of cooked-on bits that won't come off with minimal additional damage to the patina.
If you're frequently re-seasoning the wok (giving it a light coating of oil and heating it until smoking) then it should be relatively non-stick and easier to clean.
I tend to do this right after cleaning my wok after each cook with the wok.
My understanding is that carbon steel woks don't hold seasoning due to geometry and the fact they're often smooth. I also hear that the process of seasoning polymerizes oil so soap is absolutely fine so long as it doesn't contain lye. With that said, I've used coarse salt slurries when my wok has gotten dingy. On a normal basis it's just water and the scrubbing side of a sponge or a coarse brush.
I think the main thing is proper prep of the wok before cooking, namely getting it ripping hot and then applying oil before cooking anything. I can't do the entire long yau aka oil swirling because I live in an apartment and the amount of smoke triggers every smoke alarm and the whole place reeks for days. That and the fact I can't get the BTUs I want in a western kitchen led me to choose other pans over my wok but that's another story.
That's why I just throw one of these on my stovetop for wok cooking:
https://www.iwatani.com/35-fw
15,000 BTU, super convenient.
Btw, hey what's up cane?
Hey, I know you from somewhere else. I think I may give this a shot as I have a patio for infinite venting purposes. I think in an ideal world I'd have a turkey fryer and a backyard so I can annoy my neighbors with the smells of wok hei but that's for another day.
Looking at the pictures you provided, it honestly doesn't look to me like you have a crud problem so much as a seasoning one. I'm seeing scratches in the seasoning with bright metal showing through, which tells me you're cutting through your seasoning somehow. You really don't want to get down to bare metal when you clean these things, as at least part of that "crud" you're seeing on the paper towel is going to be the polymerized oils that you've built up through the seasoning process and by cooking.
The trick is to get as much of the cooked on stuff that isn't seasoning off while taking off as little of that polymerized oil as you can. In my experience, you're likely to reach that optimum point a ways before your paper towels come away looking spotless.
In other words (and purely from my own non-expert experience), you might want to consider adjusting what constitutes "clean" when dealing with iron/carbon steel cookware. Aim for "clean enough while remaining functional" rather than "spotless."
As a passionate non-soap user of steel cooking utensils I find the teflon/non-stick axiom has made a lot of people overlook the immense power of metal wool as a cleaning utensil. If you leave the grease in and just mechanically remove residue it will become non-stick by itself.
Unless of course your wok somehow can not withstand abrasiveness.
Any feedback on this way of doing things would be appreciated. Just something that works well for me. From a design standpoint I find it absurd that we ever accepted pots and pans that cannot be touched by metal objects. You're solving one problem (food sticking) and creating two more: difficult to clean, unhealthy chemical agents (in non-stick surfaces).
Carbon steel isn't teflon or non-stick. It builds up a nonstick coating from cooking with oil, much like cast iron does. Using steel wool on a carbon-steel wok is going to completely shred any seasoning that it's built up. I use metal utensils with my wok (I have a metal wok spatula) even though they probably scrape off a little seasoning if I'm rough with them. But cleaning the whole wok with steel wool should really only be done if it's in BAD shape and you want to start over with seasoning it.
Whaddaya know! Thanks for the reply.
Do you use just a soft sponge then or go lightly with the steel wool?
I typically just use a soft sponge with a little soap. Once there's the natural nonstick coating, that's usually more than enough. If there's something really cooked on (rare but actually something I currently have lol), Breath of the Wok has instructions for doing a scrub with salt, oil, and paper towels that I'm going to use. I assume the oil mixed with the salt makes it less likely to damage the seasoning somehow. I also make a lot of popcorn in my wok, which is really good for improving the seasoning because the popping kernels spread the oil evenly all over the wok really well.
Coincidentally, after seeing this post I was scrolling through Youtube and saw this video about bamboo wok brushes. They seem like a pretty solid solution (especially when, as others have said, used with soap).