The Wok Shop's 16 Inch Carbon Steel Pow Wok w/ Metal Handle (Hand Hammered)

This wok looks pretty much as I expected when it arrived, except for the "hand-hammered" marks. The marks are identical and well lined up. So they must be machine stamped rather than hand hammered. But performance wise, it is almost exactly, if not better, like the woks I used to use in back in China. Seasoning is pretty simple. I twice stirred fried, with cooking oil, a few ounces of chopped Chinese chives. The inside turned brown afterwards. You won't have the kind of non-stick effect like a brand new coated frying pan with this wok. But food doesn't stick that much, except when I stir fried rice cakes. But the food came off pretty easily. The best part is, the food made with this wok tastes a lot better. So if you want to achieve the real Asian stir fry taste, you need this one. It is so down to earth, just like the one I used to use thirty years ago. Even the rolled steel handle feel very authentic. It can get hot pretty quickly, So I need to wrap it up with a towel when upload the cooked food. It just feels so authentic Asian. It brings back the real Chinese cooking experience. If you don't have a wok ring, you need to buy the flat button type, which is what I got. I cook on a Wolf gas range w/ 16,000 BTU burners. This wok is a good match. Buy the 14". It's big enough.

Day 1:Observations:This wok came in a nice size box with no packing material. The box was undamaged and the wok was in perfect condition. The wok came wrapped in plastic. The shipping was very very fast!!!There was a lot of machine oil on the wok and no rust to speak of. The wok appears to be hand hammered since the marks are not uniform. I can't be certain this is true or exactly what process they use, but each mark is about 1cm around and the same depth although they are not spaced equally.Washing:The first thing I did was remove the plastic bag it came in and hand wash it using an old sponge and liquid detergent. The sponge turned slightly black and I ended up washing it 2 times because of a heavy machine oil smell. I also used a brillo pad to steel wool the wok inside and outside. The machine oil smell persisted.My sink was much to small for this 16" wok and so I made a bit of a mess trying to rinse. I used some pretty hot water to wash and rinse the wok.Boiling:There appeared to be no plastic or waxy coating on this Wok, but I decided to boil it with water which should remove anything left on the cooking surface. I filled the wok with water and boiled water in it for about 12 minutes to boil off any extra oil which might still be there. That left the Wok blacker where the water was and this surprised me. It left a big stain ring inside the wok as the nice bright steel was dulled and blackened a bit. I don't think this is a problem and is a normal part of boiling in an unseasoned carbon steel pan.Salting:After drying the wok, I put in some salt and reheated the wok and stirred the salt around. I am not sure what good this does, but I saw it somewhere in the instructions on another website that you can heat the wok with salt to remove residue before seasoning a wok.Seasoning.I used the instructions I received in the email from the Wok Shop since I bought it from them. They have a nice Youtube video.I chose to use Crisco shortening to season my wok and not peanut oil, canola, or grape seed oil. I used Crisco since I use that to season all of my cast iron pans and I have some experience with it. I wiped down the entire outside, inside and the metal handle of the wok.I ended up seasoning it 3 times in a row which left a really nice deep bronze to the entire wok.One thing about the Crisco is that it seemed to bead up and leave bead marks. This was really noticible after the first seasoning, but gradually everything darkened and the initial bead marks mostly were not noticeable as the rest of the wok darkened.I had to open 4 windows and get a couple of fans blowing the smoke out of the house. One of my kids left the door to the upstairs open and it set off a fire alarm upstairs so that was a good way to test that our fire alarms are still in working order. I closed all doors to everywhere else in the house so the smoke wouldn't migrate too much. The smoke was annoying and bothersome, but not overwhelming. If you live in a tiny space or a space you can't get good ventilation in, you might choose to use the stove-top seasoning method.I didn't have chives to cook in the pan as the instructions recommend, but I did have some leeks and some ginger so I heated the wok on high heat using the ring. I have an electric stove, but the big burner really seems to heat up the wok rather quickly using the ring. After the wok was heated I added some peanut oil and tossed in the ginger and leeks and stirred them around while tipping the pan gradually in all directions. Once the leeks were charred, I let the wok cool down enough and then I wiped the blackened leeks into the trash with a paper towel which I then used to wipe down the entire outside and handle of the wok.This process of cooking the leeks and ginger deepened the patina to a nearly black color in the center. Now the wok is completely non-stick and ready for its first meal.This is as far as I have gotten...we have some Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken on the menu later this week so I will update this review then.Update:(Electric Stove Limits are very real)We cooked some Vietnamese Lemongrass Chicken and I discovered that indeed my electric stove is underpowered.I turned the large burner on as high as it would go, put the wok on the ring and cooked away.It cooked about the same level as my old calphalon teflon wok or maybe slightly faster. The larger cooking surface helped. It seared the chicken better. But cooking time seemed to lag a bit from what I know a Wok can do. Simply not enough heat on my electric. No fault of the Wok. The Wok did what it was supposed to and did it well considering the limits of my stove.Overall I need a new stove or to cook on my grill burner, but since it is icy and windy, that most likely won't work very well right now.(Better tasting food with better searing)Food tasted great and the chicken was much more moist than we are used to with the old 12" wok.We are a family of 5 and the extra surface area and extra searing capacity seemed to lock in the moisture rather than stew or boil the stir fry. Our old wok simply was not big enough for most meals.The 16" size is ideal for us. I don't think I would want anything smaller.(Need to re-season maybe)The patina on the wok lost a little bit of its depth. Nothing was sticking during the cooking, but I think I need to do another round or two of seasoning to help it stay that way.(Great Wok!)Overall the Wok performed very well, the food tasted great and we got a nicer size wok for our family.I couldn't be more pleased.Next step..... a new burner of some kind. Maybe a portable since I don't want to replace a stove simply for stir fry.

Well I have been cooking with woks many years and this is a good one.I did pay about $30 more than the others woks advertised here on Amazon but I believe it will be worth it. I watch some you tube videos on how to season the wok. I basically washed with soap and water then put on my new jet burner that I purchased here on amazon by thunder group. The wok turned bright red in 40sec. I do believe 16inch is a great size if you will be cooking with lo mein noodles and or fried rice.It is not to big as others have said. Just my two cents worth.

This is a great wok. I am starting to build up the wonderful black patina of seasoning and my stir fry is tasting better with every dish! I think the wok is well made, ships promptly, blah blah - no complaints on any part of the process. The Wok Shop also included some little extra goodies for us in the package as well, which is nice.To season it, I washed it thoroughly with soap and water and a scrubber brush/choreboy wire sponge, rinsed it, and put it on a hot gas range. After super heating it (it will smoke off some of the residual packaging chemical or w/e), I let it cool, rinsed it again and coated it with peanut oil. Put it in the oven for about an hour at 400, took it out, let it cool, put some more peanut oil on it and put it on the stove again. Before cooking my first dish, I thew some of the scraps of green onions in it and some garlic and just cooked those till they burned. This helped build up a base coat for my first meal.My only caution for this is that 16 inch is huge. Most users can probably get along fine with a 14 inch. I'm still completely satisfied with my purchase, but probably should have consulted a ruler before buying the larger size. Also, the round bottom works fine on the grate on 2 separate gas ranges I've use it on.Excellent value, excellent shipping, well made product that I look forward to at least a decade of wok cooking with :)

I got this last year and felt I needed to weigh in. After a year it is rusting. I seasoned it but the wok quality is poor. If you like rust in your food this might be for you.