How to fix stained wok?

November 30, 2011 10:42 AM

I have this cast iron Ikea Identisk wok. After I first cooked with it many months ago, it got these brown stains. I then set it aside, not knowing what to do. I hadn't seasoned it before. How can I clean/season/whatever it to make it good again, and how should I be using/cleaning it to prevent this from happening in the future? Or should I just go with non-stick for stir-fries from now on?
posted by shivohum to food & drink (7 answers total)

Those stains are supposed to be there. That's what happens when metal is heated to very high temperatures (the whole purpose of a wok in the first place). It's starting to season. The wok is supposed to have those brown stains all over its inside after cooking with it a few times.
posted by Jon_Evil at 10:50 AM on November 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

Yup, the whole idea of seasoning cast iron is to make the whole wok look like that. Those stains are the original non-stick coating.

Do a little reading on the care and feeding of cast iron cookware. You're clearly coming into this cold, and it's not at all like caring for aluminum or coated cookware. Like, do you know you aren't supposed to use soap?
posted by zjacreman at 10:58 AM on November 30, 2011

I was house sitting for some serious cooks several years ago, and I spent an hour scrubbing their wok, taking back it its original shine. Now, when I look at my gloriously blackend wok, I understand why those folks never thanked me for doing such a good job. Yeah, it's supposed to look that way.
posted by MrMoonPie at 11:03 AM on November 30, 2011

You need incredibly high heat for a good stir fry. If non-stick gets anywhere close to the right temperature, it breaks down (and it's supposedly a carcinogen at that point). A non-stick pan to use for, say, scrambled eggs? That's okay, I guess. But a non-stick wok is just a crazy idea.

Everyone else is correct that this is what your wok is supposed to look like. It's a useful and beautiful patina, not a stain. When you stir fry properly, the high heat and the flavours from the patina (or seasoning, as it's known in cookware) gives the food a savoury, almost-but-not-quite-smokey flavour. Chinese cooks even have a name for it that translates roughly to "the air (or the breath) of the wok." It is, quite simply, a travesty to use a non-stick wok. The fact that they exist breaks my heart.
posted by cilantro at 11:47 AM on November 30, 2011 [3 favorites]

Don't worry about that. Do you like to deep fry? Deep fry with your wok for a while and you'll help season the pan. The idea is that the more you expose it to heat and oil, the wok will expand and develop its own natural patina that will protect it from rust and stick. Don't wash it after you use it; heat it and rub it down with oil and put it away. When its stained black and smooth you know you have a great wok that will basically take care of itself whether you're stir-frying or deep-frying.
posted by TheTingTangTong at 12:08 PM on November 30, 2011

Cook something that uses plenty of oil to season it if it rusts. The metal does discolor due to heat, but the cooking capability is fine.
posted by theora55 at 3:21 PM on November 30, 2011

People who get precious about the seasoning on their cast iron cookware are doing it at least as wrong as people who spend hours trying to scrub it all off.

Cast iron is very forgiving, and will tolerate any kind of abuse short of being bashed with hammers. If you wash it with detergent, though, you will make it rust, and that will make your cooking taste wrong. So don't do that. All you need to do to clean cast iron cookware is give it a scrub with a scourer and hot water - no detergent - then towel-dry it and give it a light coating of cooking oil all over before you put it away. Leaving it to air dry before oiling it will probably make it rust.

If it does rust, all you need to do is rinse and scour off any loose rust right before you cook with it. A tiny bit of rust ending up in the cookery will do you no harm. If you've scoured off enough that you're not tasting it, that's fine.

Towel-drying freshly scrubbed cast iron will put oily dark marks on the towel, so keep a towel just for that job. A bit of paper towel lining your cookware drawer or cupboard will help stop the oil film spreading to places it shouldn't.

Over time, oil will burn and part-polymerize and bond to the cast iron surface and turn it black. That's seasoning, and it's a good thing. You don't need to and shouldn't try to scrub it back to a full metallic shine, but if you're scouring it to knock off chunks of stuck-on burnt stuff and some of the seasoning gets scoured off too, it really doesn't matter.

You will find that as your cast iron cookware ages it will blacken more quickly, accumulate chunks of stuck-on crud less easily and less often, and become progressively quicker to clean.
posted by flabdablet at 8:23 PM on November 30, 2011 [2 favorites]