If you have read our post, “What is the best wok to buy?” you now know that our personal preference here at The Woks of Life is a classic carbon steel wok, and you may have even gone out and purchased one. While we think carbon steel is the best all-around wok, it’s important to know how to season a wok. Most carbon steel woks do require a seasoning process before the first use and continued care and maintenance to build that perfect nonstick patina.
Basic carbon steel wok models typically range from 12 to 14 to 16 inches in diameter and are made with 14 gauge steel, which is about 1.6mm thick. Most basic carbon steel woks made for home use have a long wood handle on one end and a wooden helper handle on the other so you can use two hands to lift the wok. Many Chinese grocery stores stock these basic woks, so try shopping locally and check your options online before making your final purchase. We have a few links and resources on our Chinese cooking tools page and on our recent post on how to choose the best wok for you.
We’re going to walk through a detailed first-time seasoning process that you should apply to every new carbon steel wok. (That said, friendly reminder to also be mindful of any manufacturer’s directions and warranties you may have!)
After you go through the initial wok seasoning process, all you need to do is cook with your wok often and follow our easy directions to care for it properly! Cooking with your carbon steel wok regularly means that the steel will be exposed to lots of oil at high temperatures and over time, it will season naturally. I made dinner at a friend’s house once, and I was horrified at his wok. It was covered in crusty layers and was downright greasy. His “method” of seasoning was not scrubbing the wok clean after use.
Do. Not. Do this.
Just follow those steps and essential pointers, and your carbon steel wok will age gracefully and form a beautiful seasoned patina that any Chinese cook would be proud of.
Let’s do this.
When you are seasoning a wok for the first time
Your carbon steel wok will ultimately come with some oils and dust on it from the factory, so it is always best to give it a quick wash with some mild soapy water. A scrub sponge with a green scouring pad on one side and sponge on the other is all you need; sometimes, for tougher crusted-on food we use a heavy-duty wire scouring pad.
Towel dry your wok and transfer it to your gas stove. Wrap the helper handle and even the lower portion of the long wok handles with heavy duty aluminum foil to prevent them from burning. (The photos did not show this because I forgot to do it, but I added some foil halfway through the process.)
Set your wok on the burner set to the highest heat. Make sure you clear the stove area, because things will get quite hot. Keep a dry towel or a heatproof kitchen mitt handy.
Once the wok heats up, it will start to turn a dark brown color and begin to smoke. This indicates that the residual oils from the wok are burning off. You cannot see much smoke in the photos, because we have our trusty kitchen hood going at full blast.
Next, the wok will begin superheating and the impurities from those industrial oils will burn off. Tilt the wok to superheat one area at a time and the wok will turn black and blue as the carbon steel heats through.
Continue tilting the wok while you systematically burn off the impurities, making sure to heat all areas of the wok. It may not turn brown in all areas, but be diligent at this step to ensure even seasoning.
(At this point, I realized I needed to cover the handles with heavy duty foil! I quickly wrapped the handle as best as I could but you should do this before you start.)
(My wok handles got a bit scorched, but hey it adds character, right?)
This heating process will take some time depending on how hot your gas stove is.
Continue heating and tilting until the wok is done. Once your wok has been heated, the carbon steel will take on a blue tint.
Turn off the burner and set the wok back on the stove. Pour one cup of water into the wok slowly to cool it off quickly. Be careful of the hot water splashing.
When your wok is completely cooled, move it to your sink, and use some mild detergent and your scrubbing pad to give it a light scrub. Rinse your wok thoroughly with clean, cool water.
You may see some dark spots in the metal from impurities in the carbon steel, but it’s nothing to worry about.
Wipe down the excess water with a paper towel, and place the wok back on the burner to dry it with medium high heat.
After the wok is thoroughly dried, add about a tablespoon of vegetable oil with the wok at low heat.
Spread the oil around the wok by tilting it until you get an even coating around the wok and heat for about a minute.
Turn off the heat and fold a paper towel twice and begin wiping down the wok. Use your wok spatula to start, since the wok will be hot. After it cools, you can hold the paper towel with your hands to continue wiping it down.
I like to reheat the wok again before cooking on it until just smoking. Then turn off the heat and give your wok another light scrub with water only. You can see that the vegetable oil will begin to form a patina already!
Towel off any remaining water, reheat the wok, and oil it again using a folded paper towel. Reheating the wok to remove any trace moisture that you cannot see with the naked eye is very important to prevent rusting and to help season your wok for better non-stick wokking each time you use it!
It’s normal for some cooking oil residue to remain on the wok, which over time forms that nice nonstick patina, a characteristic of a nicely seasoned wok, but wipe down the wok again to remove any surface residue. You will be repeating this process every time after you cook. For now, your new wok is seasoned and ready for your first stir-fry dish!
Cook your first dish after Seasoning your wok!
You can start start cooking right away with your seasoned carbon steel wok! We chose to start with a leafy green dish like stir fried spinach.
Heat the wok until just smoking, and add oil, minced garlic, and your spinach greens.
Stir-fry the spinach until they are wilted, season with white pepper and salt, and serve!
Now that you know how to season a wok, follow these easy steps on how to care for your seasoned wok over time.
After your wok is cool enough to handle, move it to your kitchen sink, and use your scrubbing pad and some water to lightly scrub and rinse the wok clean. (No soap required for a dish like this!)
Towel the wok dry, reheat, and after it is cool enough to touch, wipe the entire wok down with a paper towel and a few drops of vegetable oil. Your wok’s ready for storage until your next dish!
When you haven’t used your wok for a long time
Did you buy a carbon steel wok years ago and promptly forget about it? We’re here to get you to dust it off and get back into the swing of Chinese home cooking. But after a long time of no use, it may be a little worse for wear. That said, woks are more versatile than they seem. We always have ours on the stove to cook eggs, steam buns, make scallion pancakes, or even toast a piece of bread.
So here’s what you should do to revive your wok:
- Scrub it thoroughly with a small amount of mild dish detergent using a pot scrubber and make sure to get the entire surface area as clean as possible.
- Hand dry and heat the wok over high heat (but not smoking), and let cool.
- Rinse and scrub the wok again lightly another time, and dry the wok over the stove.
- Heat the wok on low and pour in one tablespoon of oil, swirling the oil evenly. Remove from the heat.
- While the wok is still warm, use a paper towel to spread the oil on the entire inner surface of the wok. There should be no standing oil.
- Your wok is now again ready to use!
Sometimes a wok can rust on the bottom like this one pictured below. You can give the wok a good scrubbing to remove the surface rust and wipe it down with a few drops of oil on a paper towel. In general, regular use of the wok and heating it to a high temperature will prevent rusting on the outside, but be sure to heat the wok to dry the inside and outside after each use.
Regular wok care for after each use
After you’ve removed the food from the wok, wash the wok. Some people think seasoning a wok means leaving the oil and film from your last meal, but that’s a common misconception. In general, just a light scrub with water is needed after light cooking.
Use a circular scrubbing motion with a scouring pad.
Clean it thoroughly! Don’t be afraid to use some dish soap to cut any heavy oil residue, but no need to scrub it to death either. You want to clean burnt and crusty pieces and any excess oil just like you do with any other pan. This is especially true after cooking dishes with heavy sauces or braising, when some of the sauce may be crusted on.
If needed, scrub the exterior of the wok with the scouring pad. It’s fine if the outside of the wok is a little rough.
Rinse the wok and dry thoroughly with a kitchen towel or paper towel. Place the wok back on the stove and heat until all the water has completely evaporated.
Let the wok cool and wipe the inside of the wok down with a few drops of oil and a paper towel. Wipe the oil all over the wok to give the surface a light coating. It’s perfectly normal to see some of the brown wok residue on the paper towel after a good wipe-down.
After any thorough washing (or if you don’t use your wok every day), it is best to add a bit of vegetable oil to your wok after it has dried out. If you do see some rust form the next time you use it, it is likely that it was not completely dried or you may not have used enough oil.
This is our large 20 inch wok that we use on our range with the dedicated wok burner. We use this for steaming large dishes, cooking during the holidays and for parties, and when blogging, of course (lots of surface area for photographs)! You can see the beautiful shiny patina after using it almost every day for the past 12 years.
Tips for maintaining a seasoned wok
- If you just cooked an especially strong food (e.g. a fish or a curry dish), you may have to wash and heat the wok twice. Heat helps rid the wok of the residual flavors. There’s nothing worse than cooking a lightly seasoned dish and tasting the fish you cooked last night.
- If you haven’t used the wok in a long time, you should wash the wok before using it. This is just common sense. If you find the wok has a rusty spot, then you probably did not heat it long enough to get rid of all the moisture or did not use enough oil to wipe it down. Pay attention to these two important steps!
- Never put your wok in the dishwasher!
- Always wash and dry your wok after cooking and wipe it down with vegetable oil, even after a simple steaming.
- After cooking with vinegar or any other acidic ingredient, promptly wash your wok. Any acid will wear away the patina of the wok. You can use a stainless steel wok or a pot to cook hot and sour soups or dishes like our sweet and pungent pork, Peking spare ribs, and sweet and sour fish.
- If you see buildup or if your wok is looking worse for wear, you can follow the steps for a new wok above to re-season it anytime.
Seasoning & Caring for Your Wok
Ingredients
- carbon steel wok
- aluminum foil
- scrub pad
- Gas stove or outside burner is best
- Dry towel
- 1 tablespoon vegetable oil
Instructions
- If your wok has wooden handles, wrap them in heavy duty aluminum foil to prevent them from burning.
- Set your wok on your stove set to the highest heat. Make sure you clear the stove area, because things will get quite hot. Keep a dry towel handy or better yet, a silicon or heatproof kitchen mitt in case the wok handles get too hot.
- Once the wok heats up, it will start to turn a dark brown color and will begin to smoke. This indicates that the residual oils from the wok are burning off.
- Next, the wok will begin superheating and the impurities from those industrial oils will burn off. Tilt the wok to superheat one area at a time and the wok will turn blue.
- Continue tilting the wok while you systematically burn off the impurities. The wok may not turn brown in all areas but you will see a degree of change in the carbon steel so make sure you heat all areas of the wok. This heating process will take some time depending on how hot your gas stove is.
- Continue heating and tilting until the wok is done. Once your wok has been heated, the carbon steel will take on a blue tint.
- Turn off the burner and set the wok back on the stove. Pour one cup of water into the wok slowly to cool it off quickly. Be careful of the hot water splashing.
- When your wok is completely cooled, move it to your sink and use some mild detergent and your scrubbing pad to give it a light scrubbing. Rinse your wok thoroughly with clean cool water.
- You may see some dark spots in the metal from impurities in the carbon steel but it is nothing to worry about.
- Wipe down the excess water with a paper towel and place the wok back on the burner to dry it with medium high heat.
- After the wok is thoroughly dried, add about a tablespoon of vegetable oil with the wok at low heat
- Spread the oil around the wok by tilting it until you get an even coating around the wok
- Turn off the heat and use a twice-folded paper towel to begin wiping down the wok. Use your wok spatula to start since the wok will be hot.
- I like to reheat the wok again before cooking on it until just smoking. Turn off the heat and repeat the washing again, giving your wok another light scrub with water only.
- Repeat this process one more time and your new carbon steel wok is ready for cooking your favorite dishes!
Hi I really appreciate your posts! I use a high power wok burner outdoors with a 100,000 BTU capacity and I typically see carbonized ingredients that require almost extreme measures to remove. It happens frequently when I add soy sauce, oyster sauce and every time I throw in some powdered chicken stock to boost the flavor or veggies. First of all, I assume that I do NOT want that carbon buildup to remain? I use a heavy 16″ Cantonese carbon steel wok as my go-to on a daily basis and I really have a nice patina forming already, but it kills me to strip it down too much just to remove the carbon build-up. In all of the videos I’ve watched showing the wok masters in HK it begs the question of how they are dealing with the carbon build-up and if they even remove it at all? Sorry for the long winded question but once I switched from cooking indoors to an outside burner my experience changed and it’s hard to find answers!
Hi there. I was following these steps and after leaving the cup of water in the pan for it to cool it left a brown stain exactly where the water sat for maybe 5 minutes. I can’t clean it off. I’m a little bummed. Will this just eventually contribute to the patina? I moved
On to the oil step and it does feel texturally a little different when I wipe it with the paper towel and it goes come off rust color there.
Hi Danielle, carbon steel woks are susceptible to rusting, so NEVER leave standing water in them. They are more susceptible to rusting right after seasoning, since they are devoid of all oil. Just give the rust spot on your wok a good scrub with a scouring pad to remove it, heat it up on the stove to dry it out completely, and and wipe down generously with oil and a paper towel when it’s cool enough to do it. Anytime you forget these steps and you get rust, lightly scrub it off, because rust definitely does not contribute to the patina.
Hi! I received a wok and promptly forgot about it before seasoning and now the inside has rusted. What’s the best way to remove that rust, and should I just season immediately following the rust removal?
Thanks!
Hi Marie, if you cleaned it and used it, it’s likely it rusted because you may not have completely dried it on the stove and wiped it down with oil after using it. I suggest you just give it a good stiff scrub with a little soap and rinse it thoroughly and heat it on the stove until it is just smoking. Then for the first time. liberally oil it by adding a tablespoon of oil spread all over the wok with a napkin or paper towel. After using each time, scrub it without soap (unless it is really greasy) in hot water, place on the stove to heat and wipe it down with a little bit of oil to give the wok a thin coating. Cook more and your wok will develop a beautiful non-stick patina. Happy wokking!
Hi there— is it possible to do this on an electric stove?
Hi Alan, an electric stove will heat the wok and burn most of the impurities and industrial oils off, which should be sufficient. But you won’t be able to get that blue steel look that you would with the constant high heat from a gas burner.
Thank you for this information! I bought a flat bottom carbon steel wok and used the instructions that came with it to season it. It’s good to know not to expect the blue steel look. Instead, I am getting a bronze to dark brown look, some splooshes on the bottom and marks on the side where I have tilted the wok to try to get the sides. I figure the worst that can happen is that I have to start all over again!
Hi Anne, just keep cooking and follow the steps to lightly scrub, reheat and then oil your wok after each use and it will season over time with a nice patina ;-)
Hi Bill and Alan,
I have also seasoned a wok by heating it in a 500 degree oven for 30-45 minutes using the same steps one would use on a gas range. Make sure to wrap any wooden handles with a small wet towel and then foil. It worked rather well.
Bill, thank you for all the knowledge and wisdom you and your family share on your site. It regularly improves my family’s cooking and eating experience, and I am truly grateful.
Hi Steve, you’re welcome and thanks for sharing your practical experience with us and our readers!
Love your site. I would like to add an additional method of wok seasoning.
Scrub it out with a stainless steel scrubber. Down to the metal. If you have lots of build up, burn it off over high heat as described in comments, protecting the wooden handle.
Then make popcorn in it. I prefer peanut oil for this, but most oils work fine. This will restore missing seasoning of the metal, and maintain existing coating.
Hi Jozseph, thanks for sharing your ideas!
What’s the best way to clean out the decades of “layers of who knows what” around the outside and inside of my family hand-me-down wok? I’ve had this in the family for so long but haven’t used it because of the layers of junk around the top of the inside part of the wok. There’s some on the outside too. I would love to start using it once it has been cleaned up.
Hi Laura, if you have a gas stove, and a strong vent hood, follow the directions to super-heat the wok to burn off impurities, and start the seasoning over like you would with a new wok. If you have lots of crusty layers, lots of smoke will be generated when it is burned off, so turn on your vent hood or heat your wok outside.