I got a flat bottom wok that I am happy stir frying on my induction cooktop. The flat bottom gets rippin hot and the sides only warm. Have to work within that smaller hot zone but I prefer the wok to skillet for containing the mess.
Lodge makes a flat-bottom cast iron wok (the interior cooking surface is completely rounded, however). It's too heavy for my kitchen scale, but according to my bathroom scale it is between 11 and 12 pounds. You'll need two hands to move it around :)
There is no such thing. A round bottom is a defining feature of a wok. If it doesn’t have a round bottom it isn’t a wok by definition. A round bottom is essential to how a wok is used.
Here's[1] Kenji talking about a "flat-bottomed wok". My Chinese friends cook on a flat bottomed wok and call it a wok. So I'm sorry, but your linguistic rigidity is misplaced.
Yes, and that’s a defining feature of a wok. You can use a flat bottom wok and add a shitload of oil but that kind of changes the dish, and not for the better.
Not sure what you’re trying to say. A wok is a very specific type of cookware for specific uses cases. The round bottom is the entire point of a wok. A flat bottom wok is like a square wheel.
Cannot imagine why op wrote “flat bottomed wok” instead of “A pan similar in shape to a wok, but with a flat bottom, so that it can be used on induction cooktops but still allows for the tossing motion that cooks use to mix ingredients in a wok”
Easy tossing for stir fry is just one feature of a wok. For example, the round bottom causes liquids to pool in the center.
I’m not saying that large flat bottom frying pans with high edges aren’t useful, I have one and it’s probably my most used pan, it’s just not a complete replacement for a wok.
You're being argumentative instead of clarifying what you're trying to say. If you've read the other comments in this thread, then you can see there are things being sold as woks that have a flat bottom on the outside but still have a curved surface on the inside. Do these also offend your notion of what may be referred to as a wok?
Yes, woks are made of thin sheet steel. This allows them to heat up and cool down instantly. If it has a flat outside and round inside then it must have a lot of mass and thus cannot cool down instantly when removed from heat. Again, an essential feature of a wok.
My flat bottom wok is still made from a thin sheet of carbon steel. It heats and cools instantly, performing the essential function of a wok. The bottom has a flat surface inside and out. You're tilting at windmills, mate.
> It heats and cools instantly, performing the essential function of a wok. The bottom has a flat surface inside and out.
It performs one essential function, it needs both a round shape and has to be made of thin sheet steel. You can only have one if you need to place it on a flat induction stove: either it’s thin and flat on the inside, or it’s round on the inside but thick.
Instead of arguing, why don't you educate? You're clearly passionate about this issue. We've covered the importance of thin carbon steel. Why is the round bottom so essential that without it we can't call it a wok?
> Why is the round bottom so essential that without it we can't call it a wok?
you need the round bottom to be able to scoop up the food and churn it. Try using a spatula on a flat bottom "wok" and flip the food to churn it - it doesn't work very well.
There's also an edge between the flat bottom and the round sides. This causes food to get "stuck" there under high heat - leading to burning. A wok is round all the way, so the spatula scrapes everywhere evenly, and you leave no burnt bits.
A flat bottom "wok" is just a pan with high edges.
kenji just released his new book (700 pages) on woks. while OP is correct about the heat deltas, it makes no difference in practice if you have the right technique. if you want to dispute that, you're going to be disputing someone who wrote a book about this over 4 years and made thousands of recipes.
That idiom isn’t really applicable to online discussion forums, at least not unless the user in question has actually been shadowbanned.
The idiom comes for fighting battles with absolutely devastating casualties to capture positions of very low strategic importance. Establishing consensus that woks may only have round bottoms may fulfil the last part, but having people write a few counter-arguments is by no means a devastating loss, it’s just the discussion forum serving its intended purpose.
In our previous house we cooked with gas, we had a fantastic stove with a wok burner. Amazing thing. With our new house we - against my best judgement - went for induction.
It's amazing, way better than our old gas stove. I'll never go back.
Yup - induction heats up quicker, although you have to use a heavy iron wok which sits still. It probably says more about how bad the consumer wok rings are though. If you have a commercial one you'd never switch from gas.
I found those burners too weak for stir-frying. I suspect that unless you have special ventilation, a burner that's hot enough for wok cooking will not be safe for indoor use.
Ours is used outside because that's where the gas bottle has to be kept and because apparently it generates too much carbon monoxide to be safely used inside. And because we have three small children and this thing burns with a foot-high flame like a jet afterburner. It's great fun
I suppose if you have one of those round made-for-wok induction hobs. the flat ones just don't heat the sides of a wok and you can't even use a round bottom work. far from "excellent".
Do you wrangle the wok on the surface (or a frying pan) for a sauté[0]? What I'm really trying to find out is: how durable is the work surface? Does it deal well with pans being slid over it, and on/off it?
I have microscratches on the ceramic surface but nothing horrible. The instructions said explicitly to lift pots and not drag them. I don't baby it and it's fine.
And if you're worried about it just buy a silicone cooktop mat to put between the ceramic and the pan, something you can't do on any other cooking surface.
When frying potato pancakes, we went outside, took a countertop induction plate, and covered the area in old newspapers. I.e., cover the plate/table in newspapers, put the pan on top.
I can only recommend such tactics for messy cooking; it's indeed the real "killer" feature of induction that even gas can't match.
It was on sale at my local grocery store, no idea the name. It is lightweight carbon steel, means it gets hot in a flash and is easy to move around with one hand. I probably paid thirty bucks for it, nothing special.
