When i am cooking food, how do i prevent food from sticking to my steel wok or pan and not getting food burnt?

Question

I am pretty new to cooking since i never had to cook in the past. My mum used to do the cooking always and i was very lazy to learn cooking. When my  mum used to tell me to learn some cooking on my own because i may need it in the future when i am not living with them anymore. I didn't listen to her. But now, i am away living by myself in a university residence place while studying for a graduation that i like. So i started to learn cooking by myself and i am surprised there is so much to learn about cooking. I always thought that cooking was simple and anyone can do it easily. Cooking as i thought was meant for people who have no other skills in life. I was wrong. i realized how important cooking can be in life and that i can't go on eating food bought from restaurant daily.

Those restaurant food are very unhealthy although they taste great and it is very tempting to feast on restaurant food. For one reason, the outside foods are expensive and they aren't healthy in the long run. I know an uncle who passed away eating outside food from the restaurant daily. He had just retired from his work and he mentioned that he wants to start enjoying life by eating whatever he loves and that he could now afford the lifestyle he always wanted. Seeing this happened to him made me scary and i wouldn't want to develop some health problems at such a young age. I try and cook whatever i can think of and when i run out of ideas to cook, i do a search online to get some ideas on what to cook.

Somehow, i feel i could be doing something wrong that is making the wok or pan very sticky and the food sticks to the wok or pan very often. I have an old non stick cooking pan and i damaged it once before by using a steel scrubber to scrub the surface of the pan. So now, when i cook food using the same pan, the food gets stuck to the pan and it gets burnt. In order to prevent food from burning i poured water on the food. This is an okay method to prevent burning but sometimes i just wanna stir fry food and not make gravy items. I can't do that because the food sticks easily to the pan. If anyone can give me a tip on how to prevent food from sticking to the wok or pan, it would be very helpful of you.

Answer 1

It can be very frustrating to see your food get burnt and stuck to the bottom of the pan or wok. Besides it is not healthy to eat burnt food because it is known to cause cancer in people who frequently like their food burnt a little. Without the proper knowledge and idea, your food will turn out to be not so tasty or bad in texture if your food keep sticking to the pan or wok. During cooking, you need to be able to achieve a state in which the food easily slides around and move freely with every motion of your pan or wok back and forth.

One tip you can learn is that always put that item or ingredient last (The ingredients that contains water). Put those things that you want to stir fry first and then after all those ingredients you wanted to stir fry is done, you put in "water containing" ingredients. The presence of water makes your food stick to the bottom of the pan or wok. A small quantity of water is still okay and won't cause immediate sticking to the bottom of pan or wok.

1. Heat up your wok or pan until you see a small amount of light smoke coming up from the wok or pan.

2. Immediately put enough cooking oil around the wok or pan making sure the oil is able to cover most areas of the wok or pan.

3. Wait till you see thicker smoke coming up from the wok or pan.

4. Lift the wok or pan and tilt it slightly around to sideways to move the cooking oil evenly throughout the wok or pan.

5. Put it back on the heating stove and look for thicker smoke coming up from the wok or pan.

6. Your wok or pan should have a nice shiny layer of oil completely formed on the wok or pan. You can actually see the shine of the cooking oil stuck to the wok or pan.

7. Now you are ready to cook any food without worrying about the food getting stuck to the wok or pan.

One of the most common mistake that a lot of people make when cooking, is not heating up the wok or pan completely and not waiting for that light smoke signal coming from the wok or pan. Another mistake is that people apply cooking oil too early before the wok or pan is hot and immediately put in their food for cooking afterwards. All these mistakes quickly leads to sticking to the wok or pan. Once your food is stuck to the wok or pan, the only way to remove it is to clean it with steel scrubber or similar ones and then repeat the above process.

Answer 2

Watch video on "How to season your new Wok step by step?" :



Watch video on "How to prevent food from sticking to your Wok?" :