Let's Wok!

Martha Stewart has always been an inspiration in my daily life, but recently it seems that we have been doing a lot of the ideas and recipes featured on her show. A segment on wok care and stir-fry recipes was recently featured on Martha and also in Everyday Food magazine. Today Ma and I shopped for stir-fry ingredients and a decent wok. Have a look:

There are a few steps necessary to take prior to cooking in your wok for the first time. We first started by looking for a wok which was not coated with Teflon. A new wok should be washed with soap and water. This is the ONLY TIME soap should touch a wok. To clean a wok in the future use hot water and a sponge. The wok then needs to be seasoned. Here's how.

Heat the wok over high heat until it begins to smoke. Make sure you have your exhaust fan while doing this.


Once the wok begins to smoke use tongs and a paper towel drizzled with vegetable to coat the wok. After the wok is coated with oil reduce the heat to low and continue to heat for 15 minutes.


I used extra-firm tofu as the protein in one of the stir-fry dishes. We cubed the tofu and then fried it over very high heat and about 3 tablespoons of olive oil. Once the tofu was browned I removed it from the wok and set it aside.


For a side dish I took hari coverts stir fried with garlic, ginger, teriyaki sauce and crushed red pepper flakes.


In order to steam/soften the beans up a little I placed a lid over them in the wok for about a minute.


These were delicious!


I had my Mom fry the dish with chicken. Again, we used a smoking hot wok with a bit of vegetable oil and cooked the chicken. We cooked the chicken until it was opaque, but not fully cooked.


We removed the chicken and set it aside. In the wok we added broccoli, julienned red peppers, mushrooms, bok choy, garlic, ginger, bean sprouts and carrots.


After the vegetables were cooked we added hoisin sauce, soy sauce, baby carrots, the reserved chicken and bamboo shoots.


The second stir-fry was then cooked exactly the same, but with the fried tofu added in the end.



As another side dish I stir-fried some boiled noodles with hoisin sauce, scallions, rice vinegar and soy sauce.


I fried an egg and chopped it up for people to use on top of their dishes. I did not add it to the stir-fry dishes because my Mom does not care too much for egg.


I had fun using my new wok for the first time. Though I did feel like I needed some type of direction or stir-fry 101 to guide me. I felt as though we just walked through the Asian section of our grocery store, a little lost, and just started throwing ingredients into our cart. I will have to do a bit of research and find various other recipes to try. If you are looking for a wok I found mine for $14.99 at a restaurant supply store in Youngstown called Zabel. If you already have a wok dust it off and give it a try.