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How to Season a wok and use a new wok

Person preparing to cook in a large wok.

Did you know that any time you trot home with a new wok you must season it? While you might think, um, but why would you season a wok? Don't you usually season the food instead? Well, seasoning a wok is not what you think it is (and doesn't involve salt and pepper at all).

When a wok comes home from the factory, it is coated in a shiny, oily layer that protects it from rusting between transporation from the factory to the store. To learn how to get your wok completely clean, watch this video.

Grace Young is an award-winning authority on Chinese cooking, a teacher, author of "Stir-Frying to the Sky's Edge", "The Breath of a Wok", and "Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen", and is a contributor to multiple national magazines. In this video, she gives us an informal lesson on how to season a new, unused wok.

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