Can wok be used for deep frying? (2023)

FAQs

Is it okay to deep fry in a wok? ›

The shape of the wok makes it ideal for deep-frying at home; its thin walls allow for agile temperature control while the flared sides catch mess.

The wok is a great pan for creative cooking. You can use it to stir-fry, steam, deep fry or blanch your food. Some people mistakenly think that you can only cook Asian dishes with a wok. Actually, you can cook practically anything in this round-bottomed cooking vessel.

What Foods are Best to Deep Fry in a Wok? Deep frying smaller items (think french fries, calamari, and karaage) and items that float (like beignets, donuts, and funnel cake) are where the Wok's unique shape truly shines at creating delicious golden brown morsels.

Yes, you can deep fry chips in a wok. Just make sure the oil is heated to 350º to 375º. Once the chips are golden brown, use a strainer to remove them from the wok. Let some of the oil drain back into the wok and set them on a plate with a paper towel.

Compared to a frying pan, a wok has a shorter cook time, fits more food, and requires less oil. Unlike a frying pan, you can season a wok which helps it develop a natural non-stick coating. Woks are best with gas stoves. Since they cook at such high heat, it's easy to burn food if you don't keep the wok moving.

High heat, loud sizzles, and a fast-paced, constant rocking motion. No, we're not describing a summer blockbuster—we're talking about cooking in a wok. Watching vegetables, meat, and aromatics go from raw to crisp in seconds makes stir-frying in a wok a wicked way to cook.

Dunlop says: “The wok is not only for stir-frying—it's used for pretty much everything. It's very economical. Deep-frying in a wok, you need much less oil than in a regular saucepan.

Get the oil up to a high heat. Place a chopstick into the oil, if bubbles form around the chopstick the oil is ready. Slowly place the coated chicken into the wok (being careful not to over-crowd the wok). Allow it to fry for 4 minutes.

Chinese cooks normally use soybean oil, vegetable oil, or peanut oil, all of which have a high smoke point. Peanut oil usually has a pleasant nutty flavor and is suitable not only for stir-frying but also for deep-frying. Canola oil, which has a high smoke point but a neutral flavor, is also a good choice.

Get a carbon steel wok. Just say no to stainless steel, heavy-gauge cast iron, and nonstick. These other materials aren't ideal for proper stir-frying technique. Stainless steel woks are often heavy, food tends to stick to them, and they don't take on a patina like carbon steel does.

Can you deep fry in a stainless steel wok? ›

Stainless steel is the sought-after option for deep frying for the following reasons: 1) High heat capacity: Stainless steel has high thermal conductivity, this means that the stainless steel act offers a steady source of heat, allowing oil to cook uniformly and retain the heat for long.

A wok is designed for when you need to constantly stir food. A frying pan is more suited for soft foods such as fragile meats and vegetables that may break during cooking. Searing meats. As previously mentioned, a wok has a rounded bottom and therefore is not suited for cooking steaks or searing other meats.

Fried foods are high in saturated fat and trans fat, so they promote plaque buildup in arteries that can put you at risk for coronary artery disease, heart failure, heart attack, and stroke.

A Wok's primary use is for making stir fry. The height of its walls make it ideal for retaining food while quickly stirring and tossing. Additionally, its rounded shape conducts heat very quickly, so it's ideal for dishes that incorporate seared meats flash fried vegetables.

Heat the vegetable oil in a wok (or a shallow pan for frying) over medium-high heat until it gives off a few wisps of smoke. Once the oil is hot, crack an egg into the middle of the wok. Use a spatula to baste the hot oil over the egg.

Chicken and lean beef are prone to sticking because they're high in protein but low in fat, Provost says. Without much fat to lubricate the surface between the pan and the food, the meat will stick. Here are a few things you can do about that.

Yep, bacon can be cooked in wok too! No longer do you need to keep your wok for sole 'stir fry' use. Essentially this is the same as when using a frying pan, but this time you put the rashers of bacon into a cold wok over a medium heat.

Pre-heat the wok before doing anything.

Even before you add oil to the wok, it should be preheated until it begins to smoke. A well-seasoned and properly cleaned wok will always have micro pores in the metal that hold some oil/food particulate—that's a good thing.

Flank steak is by far the most popular cut of meat used by Chinese restaurants in all of their stir-fry dishes. It also happens to be the most recommended cut of beef we use in our stir-fry recipes. Flank steak is flavorful, relatively reasonably priced, and readily available.

Why don't you use soap on a wok? ›

How to Clean a Wok. First things first: Never use soap, harsh cleansers or metal scrubbers to clean your wok. Doing so will remove the patina. Instead, gently scrub the interior of the wok with hot water using a regular kitchen sponge or a wok brush.

Tips for Maintaining a Seasoned Wok

Always wash and dry your wok after cooking and wipe it down with vegetable oil, even after a simple steaming. If you find the wok has a rusty spot, then you probably did not heat it long enough to get rid of all the moisture or did not use enough oil to wipe it down.

Can you cook everything in a wok? A wok's large surface area and its ability to quickly flash cook food at high temperatures, does make it the perfect utensil for stir-fries. The thing is, though, wok recipes can be so much more than this! We'll even go as far as to say that you can cook everything in a wok (almost!).

Half-fill a large pot, wok or deep-fryer with vegetable oil and heat to 160°C (325°F), or until the tip of a wooden chopstick or skewer starts to bubble (but not fizz) after 2–3 seconds in the oil. Carefully add the wings and deep-fry for 8–10 minutes, or until the wings are golden brown and fully cooked.

Put a small amount of oil (1-2 tablespoons) in your wok. You won't typically need much oil - you're stir frying, not deep frying. At this point, you'll also want to add any seasoning and/or spices you're using in your dish.

Meat first, then vegetables – If you want meat or seafood in your stir fry, cook it first then scoop it out onto a separate plate before cooking the vegetables. You'll add the meat back in at the end. 5. Don't crowd the pan – If you have too much in your pan, the vegetables will steam instead of staying crisp.

1] Scrub your wok in hot, soapy water and then dry it over low heat on the stove. 2] Turn the burner on your stove to HIGH and add 2 to 3 tablespoons of oil to the wok. I prefer peanut oil, but any oil can be used – sesame, chili, or canola. Coat the wok surface evenly with oil by tilting and turning it.

Seasoning your cast iron or carbon steel wok creates a patina. A seasoned wok will help infuse flavors into the dishes cooked inside, as well as provide a smooth non-stick surface. Without first seasoning your wok, any foods cooked inside will likely stick and won't have lots of flavor.

Professional chefs generally prefer carbon steel woks to cast-iron ones because carbon steel weighs less and maneuvers more easily. Cooking stir-fries requires moving, lifting, and shifting the pan to toss vegetables and meats for even cooking; it can be tough to do that with a heavy cast-iron wok.

Stainless steel pans have pores in them and when heated these pores open and close during the heating process. If your pan is not heated properly and you put your chicken (or what have you) in the pan, the opening and closing pores will latch onto your food, causing it to stick when you go to flip it.

What can I deep fry in? ›

Peanut, canola, sunflower, or rice bran are other alternatives to vegetable oil—all of these are neutral options that perform well at high temperatures. To put into context, most recipes will call for oil to be around 350°F for frying, and vegetable oil has a smoke point somewhere between 440° and 450°F.

The cold surface of stainless steel utensils is porous. These pores will cause the food to get stuck in them. So, when you preheat the pan, the heat will cause the surface to expand and constrict the pores. We would suggest preheating the stainless steel pan according to the following steps.

Frying fresh-cut potatoes.

Soaking peeled, washed, and cut fries in cold water overnight removes excess potato starch, which prevents fries from sticking together and helps achieve maximum crispness.

Rinsing or soaking the potatoes for an hour (or, even better, overnight) will remove some of the starch from the surface and prevent the sugars from browning before the potatoes are cooked.

Unless a battered fry, they are not adding in salt during the process. I recommend not salting the fries till they come out of the fryer and even then, waiting for an order before salting as the fries can turn limp prematurely if salted too soon.

Most restaurants have collection bins for their fryer grease, usually stored behind their restaurant next to their garbage collection containers. Most stores have their grease collected on a regular basis for free, and a lot of them receive an additional rebate check in the mail for the amount of grease they recycle.

Our recommendation: With breaded and battered foods, reuse oil three or four times. With cleaner-frying items such as potato chips, it's fine to reuse oil at least eight times—and likely far longer, especially if you're replenishing it with some fresh oil.

The short answer is yes, you can reuse fryer oil, and the color of the oil you are frying with definitely contributes to the fried food's quality and aesthetics.

Do not be alarmed if the wok looks mottled or has blackened areas. The patina will gradually darken the more you cook with the wok, giving you a natural nonstick surface. A newly seasoned wok (left, below) looks mottled and some think they've ruined the pan (but they haven't).

Maintaining Your Wok

To properly maintain a carbon steel wok, you must keep it seasoned once the cooking process is done.

Do I need a frying pan if I have a wok? ›

A wok is designed for when you need to constantly stir food. A frying pan is more suited for soft foods such as fragile meats and vegetables that may break during cooking. Searing meats. As previously mentioned, a wok has a rounded bottom and therefore is not suited for cooking steaks or searing other meats.

A wok is most commonly used for stir-frying, but because of its unique design, it has several other potential uses as well. Since it's so deep, it can be filled with water and used to boil foods, or filled with oil for deep frying. If it comes with a lid, the wok can also be used for steaming vegetables or seafood.

Absolutely! You can't really use a big frying pan for stir-frying, but you can use a wok for anything you'd use a big frying pan for—sautéing, braising, even making pancakes. The bowl shape and great heat retention of a wok make it a good tool for deep frying (plus the tall sides help catch spatters).

One obvious benefit of cooking in a wok is that its high, sloping walls allow you to easily move food around the surface without spilling it over the sides. I also discovered that a wok's tall sides create two distinct heat zones that work in tandem to cook food efficiently and evenly.

A wok is ideal for stir-frying; as the food is cooked, it's pushed up to the sides of the wok while the remaining food is cooked on the bottom. A wok uses less oil than a conventional large skillet, and its high, sloping sides contain most of the splatter.

The large cooking area of a wok makes it easy to brown the meat before adding the sauce and simmering.

The round bottom of a wok allows for heat to be distributed more evenly than a saucepan, meaning food is able to cook in less amount of time. The high walls allow for food to be tossed easier, such as when cooking a stir fry, meaning the ingredients can be mixed and cooked evenly throughout.

A wok allows you to constantly toss food through its own vapors, speeding up its cooking, which concentrates flavor and promotes the development of new flavor compounds through the Maillard reaction better than a flat skillet can.

For wok cooking, use oils with a high smoke point and low polyunsaturated fat content. Grapeseed oil, peanut oil, etc… Sesame oil and olive oil will burn and taste bitter. Oils with high polyunsaturated fat contents like soybean oil will also turn your food texturally unpleasant.

The wok is the ideal vessel for deep frying at home. Its wide, flared sides prevent oil from splattering over your stovetop and make it easy to maneuver a metal spider or strainer under the food, a task that can be difficult in a straight-sided pot or Dutch oven.

What are the disadvantages of stir-frying? ›

Eating a stir fry may be a healthy option, but cooking it could be bad for your health because it shoots microscopic particles of fat into the air, which could be hazardous if inhaled, scientists have warned.