Black-and-white photo of hands slicing with a Chinese cleaver, prep baskets behind

What Chinese home cooking involves

Cut small, cook fast, sauce last

Most of the work happens before the stove goes on. You slice meat and vegetables into even, bite-size pieces, marinate the meat for a few minutes, and stir together a sauce, all lined up next to the stove. The cooking itself takes three to eight minutes: heat the wok until it just smokes, add oil, then aromatics like garlic and ginger, then the main ingredients in batches, then the sauce. Chinese cooking covers many regional styles, from mild Cantonese stir-fries to numbing, spicy Sichuan dishes, but nearly all of them start from the same wok, the same knife work and the same few bottles.

Two ways in

Open a path for your first move. Stir-frying needs only the base kit; the Wok cooking button adds the frying and steaming tools to your kit.

Stir-fryingThe everyday core of Chinese home cooking. Small pieces tossed fast over high heat with a quick sauce. Everything in the base kit is built for it.

Start here

Cook the tomato and egg stir-fry this week, then stir-fry a batch of garlic greens to practice keeping food moving over high heat.

The Woks of Life: Tomato Egg Stir-fry

Wok cookingUsing the wok for everything else it does well, such as shallow and deep-frying, steaming fish or vegetables on a rack, and braising under the lid.

Start here

Once your wok is seasoned, steam a piece of fish or some greens on a rack under the lid, then try shallow-frying with a thermometer clipped to the side.

The Woks of Life: How to Season a Wok

Your first week

Tested first recipes

What you can cook in your first month

Tomato and egg stir-fry

The classic first Chinese dish, soft scrambled eggs in a sweet-sour tomato sauce, done in ten minutes.

Garlic stir-fried greens

Bok choy or green beans flash-cooked with garlic and a splash of rice wine, which teaches heat control.

Chicken and broccoli

Your first marinated (velveted) meat with a cornstarch-thickened brown sauce.

Stir-fried pork with bell peppers

Thin-sliced pork velveted like the chicken and tossed with peppers in light soy and oyster sauce.

Choosing, seasoning and caring for your wok

Check your stove first: on an electric coil, glass-top or induction stove, buy a flat-bottom wok, because a round-bottom wok rocks and barely touches the heat.
On a gas stove, a flat-bottom wok still works well; a round-bottom wok needs a wok ring to sit steady, and should never go on a flat electric or induction surface.
Pick carbon steel about 14 inches across: light enough to lift with one hand, heats fast, and becomes naturally nonstick as it seasons. Skip nonstick-coated woks, since the coating is not meant for the high heat stir-frying needs.
Look for a long wooden handle that stays cool plus a small helper handle on the opposite side, so you can lift a full wok with two hands.
Seasoning a new wok smokes heavily for 10 to 20 minutes. Run the hood on high, open windows, and keep pets (especially birds) out of the room.
Before every session, heat the empty wok until a drop of water evaporates in a second or two, then add the oil and swirl it up the sides.
Keep it seasoned by skipping long soaks and the dishwasher; a patchy brown color is normal and evens out with use.

A lidded flat-bottom wok of tofu, tomato and green beans on a flat induction stove — A flat-bottom wok sits flat on an induction stove

Seasoning, step by step

The Woks of Life: How to Season a Wok Free step-by-step photo guide to seasoning a new carbon steel wok and caring for it day to day.

Skills to focus on early

Even knife work

Pieces of the same size cook in the same time, which matters when the whole dish takes five minutes.

Mise en place

Everything cut, measured and within reach before the wok heats, because there is no time to chop once you start.

Heat control

A smoking-hot wok for searing, then pulling back the heat or lifting the wok when garlic starts to darken.

Cooking in batches

Adding more than a single layer of meat drops the temperature, so food steams and turns gray instead of searing.

Velveting and thickening

A cornstarch marinade keeps meat silky, and a cornstarch slurry turns a thin sauce glossy in seconds.

What trips beginners up

Home burners are weaker than restaurant ones, so your first stir-fries will taste good but not like takeout. Smaller batches close most of that gap.
A new wok sticks and looks blotchy for its first few weeks; that is the seasoning building, not a ruined pan.
The smoke alarm will go off at least once. Plan ventilation before you start, not mid-dish.
Expect a few soggy or burned dishes while you learn how fast everything moves.
Drop the habit of crowding the wok with a whole package of meat at once; cook it in two or three rounds.
Drop the habit of adding wet ingredients: dry washed vegetables well so they sear instead of spitting oil.
Drop the habit of scrubbing the wok with soap and steel wool after every use, which strips the seasoning you are building.

Flames leaping from a wok on a restaurant burner while the cook stirs — A restaurant burner, far hotter than a home stove

Staying safe around high heat and hot oil

Keep the wok lid within reach every session. If oil catches fire, turn off the burner and slide the lid over the wok to smother the flames.
Never pour water on an oil fire or into hot oil: it flashes into steam and throws burning oil out of the pan.
Use enough ventilation for smoking-hot oil and above all when seasoning a carbon steel wok: hood on high, windows open, and leave the smoke alarm working.
Make sure the wok sits stable: a flat-bottom wok on flat stoves, and a round-bottom wok only on gas inside a wok ring. A wok that tips spills hot oil.
Prevent splatter burns: pat food dry, slide ingredients in away from you rather than dropping them, wear long sleeves, and keep children and pets away from the stove.
Fill a wok no more than about a third full of oil when deep-frying, check the temperature with a thermometer, and never leave hot oil on a burner unattended.
Peanut oil is the traditional choice, but if anyone you cook for has a peanut allergy, use a refined neutral oil like canola instead.

Cooking gluten-free

Standard Chinese soy sauces, oyster sauce and Shaoxing rice wine are all made with wheat. To cook gluten-free, swap the soy sauces for tamari, look for an oyster sauce labeled gluten-free, and use dry sherry in place of the rice wine. The line notes in the kit say which bottle each swap replaces.

A hand pouring a dark sauce from a small dish into a white bowl — A dark sauce poured into a mixing bowl

Where to learn

The Woks of Life and Omnivore's Cookbook both write their recipes for home stoves, with step photos that show what each stage should look like. Chinese Cooking Demystified on YouTube is the place to go once the basics click and you want regional dishes and deeper wok technique.

Free places to learn

Why the kit looks like this

The wok and spatula are the only real equipment; a carbon steel wok is cheap and outlasts nonstick pans by decades. Most of the list is the pantry: a few sauces, rice wine, cornstarch and seasonings that each last for dozens of meals and cover nearly every beginner recipe. The lid and cleaver are worth adding early, and the Wok cooking add-on brings the extras for deep-frying and steaming.

Stir-fried pork with scallions and sesame seeds in a white dish — Stir-fried pork with scallions

Set up the wok station

The first fourteen lines are the base kit: the wok, two tools and the pantry for the first recipes. The Wok cooking lines join when you add that technique. Clicking a card selects it in the kit, and clicking the selected card again takes that line out.

Flat-bottom carbon steel wok (14 inch)

Essential · Core equipment

The one pan Chinese home cooking is built around: it heats fast, lets you toss food up the sloped sides, and works on every stove type.

budget

JOYCE CHEN Classic Series 14-Inch Carbon Steel Wok with Birch Handles

3.8(1776)

$34.95

Chinese Cooking

What Chinese home cooking involves

Two ways in

Your first week

Choosing, seasoning and caring for your wok

Skills to focus on early

What trips beginners up

Staying safe around high heat and hot oil

Cooking gluten-free

Where to learn

Why the kit looks like this

Set up the wok station

Flat-bottom carbon steel wok (14 inch)

Stainless steel wok spatula

Peanut oil for high-heat cooking

Chinese light soy sauce

Chinese dark soy sauce

Shaoxing rice wine

Oyster sauce

Cornstarch

Ground white pepper

Toasted sesame oil

Fine sea salt

Granulated cane sugar

Domed wok lid (14 inch)

Chinese vegetable cleaver

Stainless steel spider strainer

Deep-fry thermometer

Wok steaming rack