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We'll say it again: The original wok is still the best wok for home cooks.
If you love cooking in cast iron skillets or dutch ovens, you are going to love cooking in a cast iron wok just as much. And because it is lightweight Sichuan cast iron, you don't have to worry about the one and only downside to cast iron cookware, which is weight.
Chinese cast iron weighs a fraction of what American does—our 14-inch, flat-bottom "pow" wok weighs only 4.5 pounds, directly comparable to good carbon steel woks.
This wok is made by the China Hongjiang company, which has been making iron pots for more than a century in Sichuan, where it has Intangible Cultural Heritage status.
We used this wok almost daily for six months before we committed to it as The Mala Market wok. Here are the categories we evaluated that made us choose this wok. Check out the product page for even more details.
Chinese cast iron is ideal for stir-frying: This wok heats up exceptionally fast and retains heat longer than any other material. This is important because the goal of stir-frying is to cook ingredients quickly, searing and crisping proteins while retaining the crunch of vegetables. We tested this, and water came to a boil faster in this wok than in our thin, carbon steel Cen wok! Even more importantly, adding ingredients to this wok does not significantly lower the temperature, as it does in other materials, allowing you to stir-fry the entire dish over sufficient heat, even with the lower BTUs of a home stove. This sustained high heat makes possible the Maillard reaction (browning) and wok hei (the transference of the breath, or essence, of a wok to the food).
Cast iron is compatible with gas and electric (coil and glass/ceramic) cooktops. We are still testing it on induction, so if you are interested in that, please check the product listing next week for verification.
The right size and shape: Unless you have a built-in wok burner on your cooktop or another setup you are comfortable with, a flat-bottom wok is better than a round bottom for Western stoves. The size and shape of a wok are also important. Woks need to be at least 35 to 36 cm in diameter to provide ample space for stirring, flipping and tossing food. Woks that are 12 or 13 inches in diameter are simply not large enough for serious stir-frying, as the food is crowded in the wok, causing it to steam instead of fry.
Lid: This wok comes with a gold-tinted tempered-glass lid that fits tightly to the wok to facilitate steaming and braising.
Nonstick surface: When molten pig iron ore is cast in a clay mold in the Chinese process, thermal expansion and contraction creates a "turtle pattern," with small irregular lines all over the surface. These shallow cracks trap oil that becomes polymerized and creates a very effective nonstick surface.
Preseasoned: After the Hongjiang pros sand and finish the wok, they preseason it for you. Per their instructions, and our experience, there is very little you need to do to get started cooking in this wok.
Usage: The keys to nonstick cooking are sufficient heat and oil, especially at the beginning as the nonstick surface is building up. We include (translated) instructions from Hongjiang on using and maintaining the wok.
Longevity: U.S. wok pros warn that Chinese cast iron is fragile and can easily break. We have certainly not found this to be the case with the Hongjiang wok, perhaps because the manufacturing process has been improved or just because it is sufficiently thick-walled. We took our sample wok and threw it on the concrete sidewalk several times, then struck it against a concrete corner several times, with absolutely no harm to it. Having said that, if your wok breaks with normal usage, we'll replace it.
Aesthetics: We have saved one of the best attributes of cast iron for last. The cooking surface is an attractive all-over black from day one. Unlike carbon steel, which has an extremely long ugly duckling stage (usually a year or more) of mottled blacks and browns as the seasoning builds up, the surface of cast iron is naturally shiny and black from the first use. It looks so handsome on the stove, you may just keep it there.
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