Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

It’s exactly what I wanted: a basic wok with a flat bottom that will work on my crap electric stove. Don’t believe the reviews about the finish coming off. Carbon steel woks need to be treated like cast-iron skillets. This doesn’t have a finish (it has some manufacturer’s coating on it to keep it from rusting in the warehouse… wash that off). It does need to be seasoned, though. To get it working like the woks in the Uncle Roger cooking videos, you should do this before using it: 1. Wash it well, dry it well. Take off the wooden handle (this is a plus: the wood comes off making it ok in the oven). 2. Heat it on the stove empty and dry on high heat. It’ll turn colors and then mostly a dark flat gray after a few minutes of this. Let it cool. This is “blueing” the steel. 3. Rub some vegetable oil (high smoke point oil… flaxseed, grapeseed and basic canola/“vegetable” oil all work good, not olive oil) over the *entire surface*, inside and outside, with a clean paper towel. You don’t want it dripping with oil, just the lightest coating over it all like you tried to wipe it off and it’s merely oily now. Perhaps a tsp is enough for the whole thing. 4. Put the barely-oiled wok in the oven upside-down as hot as the oven goes for about 30 minutes. Let it cool. This step cooks the oil on and converts it into a dark coating (this is “seasoning” the wok/skillet by “polymerizing” the oil… turning it into hard non-stick coating). You’ll know you did it right if the wok comes out of the oven with NO oily feeling left at all. 5. Repeat the oil-and-oven step a few times. 3 is good, more is always better. The first couple times you’ll see parts of it getting dark and shiny. Do it till the whole thing is dark and shiny everywhere. Besides being a durable, safe (no teflon here!) cooking surface, this coating is also what protects it from rust. That’s why it’s important to season the whole surface. NOW: you’ve got a wok ready-to-cook. After cooking, to clean just wipe it down (water and soap is ok if you need it but if it’s just oil, get the solids out and dry-wipe is ok), and then heat up the wok empty until the residual oil left behind smokes off and becomes part of the seasoning. Every once in a while, do the full-oven coat again If it ever rusts, scrub the rust off however you want(vinegar helps), and re-season it. If it ever gets too gunked up from layers of cooked-on oil, scrub it bare with hot water and soap and re-season it. Being able to “re-do” the coating is what’s awesome about carbon-steel cookware. ——- All that aside, the wok is nothing special, but the price is right and the included cookware is nice if you don’t have long tools like that. The fry rack is cool and the lid is cool (many don’t come with a lid). Because of the need to season it, I appreciate that the wooden handle comes off easily for use in the oven: it makes it a lot easier. The pattern on the surface is cool… I don’t know if it does anything, but it works fine. All-in-all, if you’re just looking for a no-frills wok to make some serious stir-fry, this is a fine choice.