How To Season a Carbon Steel Wok (at the beach, or anywhere)
The owner of the Wok Shop in San Francisco’s Chinatown stopped me on the way to the register.
“That’s a round bottom wok,” she said. “Are you sure your house has the right burner for that?”
“Well,” I answered, “It’s like this.... We’re not so much buying the right wok for the house. It’s more like getting the right house for the wok.”
“Oh?!” Grinning and pointing a finger at the ceiling... “I like where you have your priorities!”
Yep. Me too.
It’s a bit of an exaggeration, this statement about the wok. But not much of one. After five years of visiting the small pueblo of Sayulita, Nayarit, on Mexico’s Pacific Coast, we finally found the huevos to buy our own home here. Like a lot of gringos (and non-gringos), we found ourselves talking about the possibility of a home here during the very first visit. After that, it was a process of one thing or another conspiring to inch us closer and closer to the commitment.
The wok was one of these things.
At home, I make do with a 14“, carbon steel, flat bottomed Helen Chen wok on a regular, flat gas burner. And hey, that wok gets 5 stars. It’s faithful and well-seasoned and cranks out at least three great meals a week in our standard American kitchen. But I dream of fire. Of standing over an enormous, blazing BTU inferno, brandishing a shining sliver spatula like the sword of Camelot, flipping screaming hot garlic, chives and chicken, cackling maniacally under a pair of singed eyebrows. Which is, in my kitchen, impossible, without filling the entire house with splattered oil and billowing smoke.
All over Thailand those glorious, standalone outdoor propane burners made me drool with envy. That seemed like the answer, if it weren't for the post-5PM fog that descends on our backyard year-round, making it a totally inhospitable outdoor kitchen environment.
In Sayulita, on the other hand, the weather’s warm all day and night, often with a nice breeze in the evening. Here, we don’t spend much time inside. It’s the perfect place to get a proper wok fire going. Also, even more important, having a kitchen and wok setup meant the ability to bring our favorite foods to our favorite place. As of now, there’s no place for Pad Thai or Hunan Chicken in town. Ah, the cravings for noodles! It burns, it burns! So whatever we need to build to build a REAL wok-ready kitchen here, we’re gonna do it.
After we closed on the house, it was straight to Chinatown for me. First, to the Wok Shop, to upgrade to a 16“ round bottom carbon steel wok and purchase a 32,000 BTU burner that should probably be illegal for civilians (haven’t been that excited since opening a 64-bit Sega Genesis system - WITH Altered Beast - on Christmas 1989), then a bunch of essential ingredients that I was skeptical about being able to purchase even in nearby Puerto Vallarta. Lastly, a gigantic tacky suitcase from one of the tourist shops, to stuff it all in. Talk about one stop shopping.
The TSA website was a little murky about which things may or may not be allowed through customs. When the customs officer searched our bags they filched the whole dried chiles, but were cool with the crushed ones. Seems kinda arbitrary. They fortunately overlooked the pickled whole chiles in a jar - haha! So we’ve got those and everything else we brought, safe and sound in the casa.
And now, this baby has to get seasoned, because the salt air is already attacking it.
The Wok Shop’s been testing oils for wok seasoning, and flaxseed oil came out on top, so use that if you can get it for seasoning, and follow these steps:
CLEAN IT:
Scrub the wok - hard! don't nancy around! - with a sponge and soapy water to remove as much of the yucky protective coating as possible.
DRY IT:
Put the wok on the stove and crank up the heat to get it completely dry.
OIL IT:
Once it’s cooled, use a paper towel to coat the inside and outside with a thin layer of flaxseed or other neutral tasting oil. Approximately 1 tsp per side or so.
COOK IT:
Bake the wok at 400-425 degrees fahrenheit for 40 minutes. Make sure to wrap any wooden handles in a wet rag with foil wrapped around it, so that they don’t get scorched. Also make sure to put the wok into the oven upside down. Fail to do that, like I did the first time, and the oil will pool in the bottom of the wok, making the coating uneven.
DO IT AGAIN:
Let it cool off, and then, like Aimee Interrupter says... Do it again, Do it again... For maybe three times total.
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