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Wok in progress

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My carbon-steel wok, bought from a shop on Shanghai Street, Kowloon, is the cheapest pan in my extensive batterie de cuisine. It's also one of the most used - and not just for cooking Chinese food. Its distinctive shape gives the wok a surprisingly large surface area - far more than any other skillet or pan that's 35cm in diameter (which is an ideal size to for most home burners).

The wok was designed to cook food quickly using very little fuel. When placed over a flame, it is hottest on the bottom, where it's in direct contact with the fire; but the pan's shape allows the heat to diffuse upwards, so the sides are hot enough to sear and brown ingredients.

Many people associate woks solely with stir-fries. With this traditional Chinese technique, ingredients are cut into small, even pieces and put into a wok according to how long they take to cook. Aromatics such as ginger and garlic are added first to flavour the oil; the meat goes next, to brown it; and finally, tender vegetables are mixed in towards the end. A stir-fried dish usually takes just a couple of minutes to cook from start to finish.

If you need to prepare larger pieces of food or meats that take longer to tenderise, after the initial stir-frying to brown the exterior of the meat, pile the ingredients into the centre of the pan, add some liquid (to help create steam), place the lid on the wok, and lower the heat, stirring occasionally. This way, the food braises and cooks through.

The wok can also be used for steaming, smoking and deep-frying. With the latter, the wok uses less oil than you would need in a flat pan, although it works best for smaller pieces of food. Don't use a well-seasoned (more on that in a minute) cast-iron or carbon-steel wok for smoking or steaming, because it will ruin the patina.

Woks are made of many types of metal. I prefer the traditional cast-iron or carbon-steel versions. They're a little more work initially, because they do have to be seasoned and kept oiled, or else they rust, but it pays off in the long run because the surface becomes virtually non-stick while using very little oil. Woks are also made of stainless steel, but this metal can't be seasoned, so food sticks to it. Woks coated with a non-stick surface shouldn't be heated over a high flame, which means foods can't be stir- fried at their optimal temperature.

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