Wok Star Eleanor Hoh

Be a Wok Star!

cast iron wok

How to clean crust and restore cast iron wok

By 4 Comments

Never fear if a little crust forms when cooking in your cast iron wok! Sometimes, when you use fermented ingredients like tamari or high sugar content like onions, they can form a little crust. If you don’t scrub off properly, 3 things happen:

  1.  the crust prevents heat getting to your food
  2.  the crust makes your wok smoky
  3.  the crust hardens and becomes thicker and thicker

Here’s my short, 2 1/2 min. video shows you how to scrape the crust off, wash it out and restore your cast iron wok, so easy.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve come across this and what you were cooking when it happened?  If you try my method, did it work for you?

How to clean crust and restore cast iron wok

By 2 Comments

Never fear if a little crust forms when cooking in your cast iron wok! Sometimes, when you use fermented ingredients like tamari or high sugar content like onions, they can form a little crust. If you don’t scrub off properly, 3 things happen:

  1.  the crust prevents heat getting to your food
  2.  the crust makes your wok smoky
  3.  the crust hardens and becomes thicker and thicker

Here’s my short, 2 1/2 min. video shows you how to scrape the crust off, wash it out and restore your cast iron wok, so easy.
Let me know in the comments if you’ve come across this and what you were cooking when it happened?  If you try my method, did it work for you?

Cast Iron Wok Is Key To Success!

By 1 Comment

I love weekends when hubby is the Wok Star and his wok of choice is my cast iron wok! He refuses to use anything else after his experience with a friend’s flat bottom carbon steel wok on their residential gas stove during a hurricane.   He ended up  literally throwing his hands in the air and turning it over to me!
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Breakfast is usually a toss between fried egg or an omelet filled with goodies.  Lately, the latter because he claims you need bread to sop up the squishy yolk. Since we both cut back eating starchy carbs like bread, potatoes, rice, I didn’t have any bread in the house. My solution? I suggested laying his fried egg on top of my version of Huevos Rancheros and let the yolks ooze with the lentils, umm!
It’s a joint effort in the kitchen in the weekends. Hubby likes to be the wok master (as most guys do!) and today he fried 3 eggs all in one go with coconut oil, smells amazing! So, boo to all the naysayers who poo pooed when I said you can fry more than one egg in a wok! We’ve done four eggs. He loves this cast iron wok because when the eggs are ready, they come away easily from the wok, no sticking, no mess, no frustrations.  The yolks are intact and always a success.
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I usually make the sides to go with his omelet or fried egg. My version of Huevos Rancheros with lentils (ready cooked) slathered with a spicy Cajun spice seasoning, chopped tomatoes and scallions and reheated. You can make loads of variations with different veggies to add to the lentils. A little spinach salad with chopped jicama, chayote and mini sweet peppers tossed with my homemade vinaigrette was a nice crunchy contrast to the soft lentils.
I think I’ve converted him, yay cause I heard him murmuring ‘umm’ quite a few times. It just shows, if you can make it tasty, the perception you need bread to sop up the yolk can be dashed.
If you want your partner to make you breakfast, give them the right tools so they’ll be confident, have fun and succeed in cooking and that my friend is a cast iron wok and a gas stove setup, enough said!