Give Your Wok a Facial

We all found Grace Young's expertise invaluable when she showed us how to season a wok. But what if your wok isn't new? What if you tried out the wok thing years back, shoved it in the back of your cabinet in frustration because you didn't have an inspiring guidebook, and now it's a rusty mess? (No. No. You would never do that. I meant to say, what if you bought an old wok at a garage sale, and need to know how to clean it?)

No worries. The Wok Doctor is in, and she shows us here how to use salt and oil for a "wok facial" to clean and rehabilitate even the worst woks. Hooked? There's more in Young's new book, Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge.

-- Rebekah Denn

Comments

[Cat Bismuth on August 02, 2010 at 02:19 PM]

I have used this very same method for maintaining cast iron (yes, my cooking roots are almost thoroughly Southern) and even for Le Creuset porcelain pans for YEARS. It is non-toxic, abrasive without being destructive and completely effective. Also, very low cost solution.

Edit feedback: what happened to the audio at about 3:25?

[Rebekah Denn on August 02, 2010 at 11:45 PM]

Cat, thanks! I hadn't thought to try this on Le Creuset. And, on the audio, it was a live recording of Grace's demonstration, and that's the spot where we turned off the exhaust fan.

[dick on August 03, 2010 at 05:27 PM]

Just a request or suggestion or whatever. I really wish you would print out the text of these short videos. I am hard of hearing and have to keep the volume down because of the sleeping time of my neighbors. I can usually get most of it if I run the videos several times but it would be a big help if you also printed out the text as well. Sooner or later these videos disappear from you tube and then we lose what was there. Having the printout would be a real help.

In the case of this particular video, at a couple of points it seems as if the speaker got too far away from the mic and I lost that part all together. I put this on the hbin5 blog as a way to clean up cast iron pans and a couple of the others on that blog had the same problem.

[Michelle on August 03, 2010 at 08:07 PM]

Love the idea of using salt to clean my cast iron!

Excellent video with so much great info but because of the poor sound quality much of the info is lost.

Michelle

[Pete on August 03, 2010 at 11:24 PM]

Fine grade steelwool works well also... this method is the ultimate in simple, though, so thanks and I plan to use it.

The purists - re: soap and woks, are wrong. Just make sure to rinse it out promptly and thoroughly, dry the wok completely and season it with a small amount of oil before putting it away.

[Stewart on August 03, 2010 at 11:41 PM]

Let me make another who wishes for a transcript-not just on my own behalf, but also for my relatives who live beyond the reach of high-speed connections and still have to rely on dial-up for their internet connections! So much information is lost to us due to its being on video that we can not watch or hear! In essence I have followed another useless link, and will not bother several other would-be readers because this is just a waste of time, and a frustration to boot!

[Stewart on August 03, 2010 at 11:43 PM]

Let me offer an apology for the excessive use of exclamation marks...I feel so strongly about this but don't mean to come across so aggressively.

[Rebekah Denn on August 04, 2010 at 11:48 AM]

Thanks, all! As for transcripts, on previous videos we've written captions -- sounds like we should keep doing that.