The Best Woks

Before we began testing, we invited Young to the test kitchen for a friendly “wok versus skillet” cook-off where she prepared a set of recipes in a wok while we used our winning nonstick skillet to make the same recipes. Test cooks and editors gathered to compare the techniques and results. While the recipes came out well in the skillet, all agreed that the wok-cooked versions tasted at least as good—many said better—than the skillet-cooked versions. These results were likely due to the wok’s hotter temperature and well-seasoned surface that resulted in food that had better browning and was more flavorful. Also, it was clearly easier to stir-fry in the wok. With its high walls and rounded shape, the wok allowed Young to stir less carefully and move food around more thoroughly during cooking. Another plus? Her stovetop stayed neater. Active stir-frying was much trickier in our low-sided skillet.

Next, we bought an array of woks to test. All measured 14 inches from rim to rim, the size that our wok experts said is optimal for home cooks preparing anywhere from two to six servings. Smaller woks can crowd and essentially steam your food instead of searing it, while larger ones can take up too much space and be unwieldy on the average home stovetop. We picked woks with flat bottoms rather than traditional round bottoms. A flat bottom not only lets the wok sit securely on the burner but also negates the need to buy a “wok ring” to hold the wok upright; this shape also works on a wide variety of cooktops, from gas to induction to electric. All the woks we tested were made of carbon steel, cast iron, or lightweight cast iron, but only the cast-iron woks and one of the carbon-steel models arrived preseasoned. The rest were made of uncoated carbon steel and needed preparation before they were ready for cooking (see “How to Season a New Wok”). 

In each of the woks, we stir-fried a wide range of ingredients and used a variety of techniques, including cooking in batches, steaming and crisping vegetables, handling piles of slippery noodles, searing meat and seafood, scrambling eggs, and frying rice. We stir-fried green beans; prepared Fried Rice with Shrimp, Pork and Peas; and made Thai-style rice noodles with broccolini and chicken. We asked additional testers, both novice and experienced in wok cooking, to prepare a popular Chinese homestyle dish of stir-fried tomatoes and eggs. And throughout testing we noted how easy each wok was to use and clean, and compared recipe results. Here’s what we learned.

Lifting a big, hot wok full of steaming food puts a real strain on the cook, especially if the wok itself is heavy. Most of our woks had helper handles, but we usually needed our other hand to help transfer food into a serving dish. You can leave the wok on the stove and scoop out the food, but that risks overcooking it, especially when the wok is made of cast iron and retains heat. We found woks much more efficient and versatile when we could lift them with one, nondominant hand. In our lineup, woks ranged from just less than 3 pounds to more than a whopping 11 pounds, and testers had a strong preference for the easy maneuverability of the lighter woks.

On a related note, we also preferred carbon-steel woks. While we were ultimately able to make food successfully in all the woks—and enjoyed skipping the seasoning step when using preseasoned cast-iron woks—all the cast-iron models were thicker, heavier, and slower to heat up and retained heat longer than the carbon-steel models. As a result, they were slightly less responsive and made it somewhat more difficult to control the rate of cooking than in woks made of thin carbon steel.

One of the biggest differences we saw in the woks was the material, location, and shape of the handles. All the models but one had metal or wooden handles (one had a plastic-coated metal handle), and we went into this testing assuming that metal, being more durable than wood, would be the way to go. But since stir-frying often happens over high heat, it didn’t take long before we realized we preferred the models with stay-cool wooden handles. We lost many valuable seconds reaching for a pot holder or towel to grab metal handles, which often surprised us by heating up halfway through a recipe.

Models with a single, straight handle—like on a skillet—gave us the leverage and control we needed to lift and move the wok, and we preferred this design to woks with a pair of small looped handles. Because they’re set close to the wok, these small, ear-like handles quickly got too hot. When we tried to lift those woks using a single loop (and a pot holder or towel), the opposite side of the wok sometimes suddenly swung down out of control. With the single-handed woks, the angle of the handle mattered, too: Long handles that were level with the wok’s rim, or tilted radically upward, felt unbalanced and awkward. But woks with handles that were angled only slightly gave us better leverage and made the wok feel lighter and more balanced. Moving it felt more natural and comfortable.

When you’re cooking food in a wok, the flat portion at the bottom is usually the hottest area because it is in direct contact with the heat source, while the sloping walls form a slightly cooler zone. (That said, if you have a lot of liquid at the bottom of the wok or if you’re cooking with a gas flame turned up too high, the walls might become hotter than the bottom.) You can move food around the wok to use these zones to the best advantage. We measured the diameters of the flat portion at the bottoms of the woks and compared them to the woks’ cooking performances. They ranged from having no flat interior space (in the heavy cast-iron wok) to 7 inches; we preferred the model with the widest interior space. Having a bit more of the wok’s cooking surface at the hottest temperature helped us sear food and evaporate moisture more effectively as it cooked.

Many of our test kitchen recipes show that you can stir-fry in a 12-inch nonstick pan with good results. But using a wok can be much easier, especially when cooking large volumes of food, such as noodles or rice, that tend to spill over the sides of a skillet unless you stir very carefully or cook in multiple batches. And because we don’t recommend heating a nonstick-coated skillet until it’s as hot as a typical wok, it’s harder to achieve the browning and flavor produced by cooking in a wok. Bottom line: We find it a very useful pan to have. We’re still going to rely on our nonstick skillet when cooking eggs and fish, but for stir-frying, we prefer a wok.

After cooking batch after batch of stir-fried noodles, chicken, shrimp, vegetables, eggs, and fried rice in every wok in our lineup, we had three favorites that we highly recommend: the Taylor & Ng Natural Nonstick Wok Set 12153 14″ Carbon Steel; the Joyce Chen Classic Series 14-Inch Carbon Steel Wok with Birch Handles; and the IMUSA 14″ Non-Coated Wok with Wood Handle, Silver. 

All weighing in at around 3 pounds, these were the lightest woks we tested—and their comfortable, stay-cool wooden handles made them easy to lift and maneuver, even when full of hot food. All three had the widest flat cooking surface of the woks we tested, and their thin carbon-steel construction made them heat and cool quickly and responsively as we cooked. The Taylor & Ng wok costs a bit more, but came with a lid, which is handy for steaming foods. Our other two favorites are less expensive, but lack lids, though you can buy one separately—just look for lids that are made to fit 14-inch woks. With lids, all three woks cost about the same. 

While it’s called “natural nonstick,” the Taylor & Ng wok does not have a nonstick coating in the traditional sense. The company uses a high-heat treatment in the factory to preseason the wok, which oxidizes the surface of the carbon steel and turns it a deep blue color. As the wok is used over time, the blue will fade and be replaced by the normal brownish-black color of seasoned carbon steel, but in our testing, we found the head start in attaining a “naturally nonstick” seasoning was helpful. That said, the co-winners quickly gained a nonstick coating after their initial seasoning, and this seasoning kept improving over the course of testing. The Taylor & Ng and Joyce Chen woks are similar in their weight, shape and handling. The Imusa wok has a chunkier main handle that testers with smaller hands found slightly too thick, but otherwise performed equally with the other two. Any of these three woks will be a great addition to your kitchen.