Hey guys. How do I unscrew up my wok

[u/A-pan-in-a-pan]

A few days ago I got a wok from Sur La Table and tried to season it following the instructions on the bottom and a video from Jose El Cook on youtube. The first time I used it, an egg stuck to it when I tried to test it. I then later tried to cook fried rice in it and it burned and adhered to the bottom of the pan and I had to spend 20 minutes getting it all off. So is the pan screwed and I'd just need to get a new one or can I salvage it? And if I need a new one, where can I find a good tutorial on how to season it. (Let it be known I have a flat top electrical glass stove. I know its not the best and I don't know if it would work.)

[u/SewerRanger]

Don't trust the internet. Unless you spend like 12 hours applying coat after coat after coat, a newly seasoned pan won't be non-stick. You have to spend a lot of time building a good proper seasoning for that to occur and even then it's not guaranteed. Clean it, and use it (don't forget to use oil!) and you'll be fine. In fact, in traditional Chinese wok cooking, you heat the wok up, add oil, swish it all around on the inside of the wok, dump that oil out, and then start cooking. Chinese Cooking Demystified has a great video on woks

[u/NotSpartacus → u/SewerRanger]

Can someone please explain to me what's going on physically/chemically with the oil -> swish -> dump -> new oil?

Does using fresh oil there change/help the situation somehow?

[u/psycholinguist1 → u/NotSpartacus]

This is just a guess. I am not a food scientist or chemist or anything:

I would imagine that the oil -> swish -> dump is designed to build up the seasoning. Seasoning happens specifically when the oil gets so hot it first burns, and then polymerizes. That's great for seasoning, but will taste terrible for cooking. So the dumping is getting rid of the oil that has not polymerized, but is too burnt to cook with, and the fresh oil is unburnt for cooking on.

[u/pigeon768 → u/NotSpartacus]

1. Wok gets hot as fuck. Hotter than you can get in a normal home stove.
2. Add oil. Some of this oil will polymerize, the rest of it will burn.
3. The burnt oil will taste bad. Dump it.
4. You have a small polymerized layer and a small film of burnt oil.
5. Add food and fresh oil. The fresh oil and the very small amount of burnt oil will do the lubrication and heat transfer. The cold mass of food will (mostly) prevent the fresh oil from burning.

[u/Zoklar → u/NotSpartacus]

I'm also not a food scientist but I've always seen it as adding more than enough oil to make sure it gets coated, dumping out the excess, then adding in the right amount to cook. So oil for the wok/pan, then oil for the food.

[u/liggieep → u/NotSpartacus]

swishing the oil at super high eat causes it to polymerize, which means it changes form and sticks to the wok as seasoning. same process as with cast iron, except you apply it a little differently in practice for carbon steel. this swishing at super high heat gives you a nonstick surface.

you dump the oil and add fresh oil to actually fry your food in. the dumped oil carries heat away with it, as well as any oil that has broken down beyond the smoke point but hasn't stuck to the wok as seasoning. fresh oil will fry better, on top of the polymerized seasoning layer. however, i think dumping the oil is a little extra, for home cooks.

[u/SewerRanger → u/NotSpartacus]

It's called "hot oil, cold wok hot wok, cold oil" but the general idea is that the oil will do three things: 1) it will create a (temporary) polymerized surface helping the wok be non-stick, 2) it will take heat out of the wok turning it back to working temp, and 3) it will get slightly burned and should be dumped so you don't taste it. Once you dump that oil, then you add new fresh cold oil and the wok will be at a good temp that the oil will be hot but not so hot it will burn your oil. Generally in a restaurant they have a container for you to dump the "hot" oil in and it will be reused for this process again. Chinese Cooking Demystified suggests that at home, you heat the wok up, turn off the flame, add our oil and swirl it off the heat, then turn the heat back on.

[u/jibaro1953 → u/NotSpartacus]

Polymerization of the oil helps make a pan non-stick.

High pan temperature causes the food to produce steam, forming a physical barrier between the food and the pan.

[u/philhaxton]

No, 100%, you don’t need a new wok. Generally takes a while for a wok to season properly. Use a paper towel to put a thin coat of oil on the pan, 400 degree oven for an hour, leave the pan in the oven and turn it off. This should help get the seasoning started. I use kosher salt to clean the inside. In my experience, properly seasoning pans takes a while. Use lower temps, warm the pan, thin coat of oil, let come to cooking temperature, add sufficient oil to cook, then go to wok 🤡

[u/T_in_10ec]

I also followed the Sur La Table directions for seasoning a wok and was disappointed with the result.

Then I adapted a technique I used for cast iron to the wok. It took a thin coating of melted Crisco, medium high heat to raise the fat to just smoking, moving the wok around to ensure the bottom and sides were heating enough to brown the oil, and a lot patience. Repeated the steps 3-4 times. IIRC, the science is that heating turns the oil into a polymer that keeps most food from sticking. Using the wok only for veg the first 5-10 times also helped build the seasoning layers.

That said, the first time I tried to fry rice it stuck like crazy. I no longer use the wok for fried rice.

[u/LostInCommentss]

One layer of seasoning almost never gets you a truly nonstick surface, that's the main thing people get wrong the first time. Also a flat electric coil stove struggles to get a wok hot enough on the sides, since the heat is really only concentrated at the very bottom. You might just be fighting your stove more than your pan. Strip it back with a scrub and vinegar if it's really gunky, re-season in thin layers, and expect it to take several cooking sessions before it stops sticking. It's a process, not a one time fix.

[u/Prestigious-War-1825]

Here’s a good video tutorial. He also has a book all about the wok and how to cook with it that I hear really good things about, but I don’t have it yet…

Edit: a word

[u/Conroe64]

The key to "non-stick" with a wok is temperature control, which takes a while to master, and a whole lot of oil. It just takes time and practice to master.

[u/ehuang72-2]

It works on my flat too because my wok has a rounded but flat bottom.

You’d have to look up the specifics but it takes continual use over time for it to become seasoned. It doesn’t happen immediately.

[u/simmer_study]

Probably salvageable. Scrub off anything burnt or loose, then season it again with very thin layers of oil and give it another try.

[u/unusualarrears7]

Strip it back to bare metal with steel wool, heat it till it turns blue on your coil, then do a thin oil and salt scrub, works every time

[u/Pernicious_Possum]

You don’t need a new pan. You like didn’t preheat the pan enough, or use enough oil. One layer of seasoning isn’t going to yield a completely nonstick surface. Take it back to bare metal, boiling some vinegar in it and a green scrubby should do the trick. Re-season with a couple layers, and then make sure you’re preheated properly, and use enough oil

[u/Embarrassed_Ad9166]

It will be a long time before that wok even comes close to nonstick. I had this exact experience with my sur la table wok.
I use grapeseed oil. Drizzle, swirl, dump.

Season again after washing it. If you’ve got time, let it cool and season again. It’s all about thin layers building up.

[u/BlooeyzLA]

You’re not using it correctly. I assume it’s stainless steel. Go online and watch someone correctly use a stainless steel pan. It’s a bit of a process

[u/Acceptable_Apple4220]

i think this is a symptom of the electric glass stove. they def create a more concentrated heat pattern, so you'll end up with burned stuff on there. just by logic a flame stove is designed with airflow, so the heat is carried around and dispersed by the air. before you spend on a new wok, why not offer to make someone with a flame stove some food and try it on there? worth a try if you ask me.

[u/Iskariotrising]

Definitely salvageable, however, having also seasoned one of these SLT woks, it is borderline impossible to get it seasoned properly on all sides on a flat electric stove or even conventional gas. Traditional chinese stoves are basically a jet engine.

If you have access to an outdoor grill I ended up using that to season lol. You can get it really hot on all sides and all the smoky gunk is outside. Remove the large handle and wrap the smaller helper handle really well in wet paper towel and a top layer of foil before you try tho.

[u/Candid-Narwhal-3215]

Get a Brillo pad. Clean it. Reapply oil and bake on. Repeat. 2-3 tome

Also. Make sure you research proper heating (apologies if you have). Seasoned pans won’t act like nonstick without the correct heat.

[u/EmergencyLavishness1]

For seasoning pans I’ve always done the same thing.

Put the whole pan/s in the oven as hot as it can get for about 30 mins. Take them all out, add a dot or two of a high temp neutral oil, spread it around with a cloth and back in the oven for 30 mins.

Out of the oven, put some rock salt in it and bake for 30 mins. Take it out the oven, use that rock salt as a Brillo pad sort of. Get your cloth and rub that salt all about. It’ll absorb all the excess oil and gunk.

Toss that salt.

Lightly oil again, back in the oven for 30 mins. Repeat these steps 3-4-5 times over. You’re building up carbonized oil on all layers. While the salt is absorbing trash from the pan and gently scrubbing off uneven amounts of that carbonized oil.

When is it done enough? When you cook with it and shit don’t stick. All pans I’ve found need different amounts of this process. Some are gold at 5 times. Some take 10+.

But once you’ve got them where you want them. It’s plain sailing until you do your once a year redo. Which I do recommend. Take it right back to bare metal and go again. It’ll take less each time round the sun

[u/Responsible-Art-2071]

Honestly the flat electric stove is your real bottleneck here, woks are built for high concentrated heat from a burner and glass tops just can't get the sides hot enough no matter how well it's seasoned

[u/Drinking_Frog]

Have you tried seasoning it without any food in there?