Please stop buying infomercial cookware this very instant!
This is the first of two parts on using an inexpensive, carbon steel wok as one of the most potent, and versatile weapons in your preparedness arsenal.
In this short series, I will show you how incredibly adaptable a carbon steel wok is for everything you need to do with the grid up or the grid down. I will show you how to take a grid down situation from, omg to, who gives a pluck. We are even going to bake a cake in it without burning the bottom of the cake, so stay tuned.
First things first. The actual truth about seasoning and caring for a carbon steel wok, and why even bothering to wok the wok and talk the talk.
The best place to acquire a carbon steel wok, other than the obvious online heavy hitters, is local China town/Asian markets where you live. For the 15 to $20CAN mark you can score these by the armloads. Or, two to five bucks at garage sales for people who have no idea of their true value and potential. It doesn’t have to have a Gotham city coating, and it’s not sold by a yelling, maniacal midnight salesman promising you it’s better than cast iron. I can think of one good use for cast iron right now. A flat bottomed wok is your best bet for all around survival, homesteading, camping use but round bottom has its charms as well. Go for about 14 inch I would say.
Seasoning and caring for a wok. Burn the living plankshit out of it in a fire or on a 50,000BTU outdoor cooking burner like I did. You will see it start to turn a slightly different colour. When it all has turned a slightly lighter colour, toss some water and detergent in, and boil the living plankshit outta that. Then rinse it out and cook a few strips of bacon in it. A light coating of oil with a paper towel will just keep it from rusting.
I have double henckels stainless steel pans, and I have an extensive collection of cast iron. I love it all. But the carbon steel wok is the one cookware piece to rule them all. It is far, far, far more versatile than stainless steel or cast iron, and you could never do better in a weight to value ratio reckoning. Meaning you could pack it on your back if you had to. Plus, if you carry it on the outside of your pack you can place it upside down on the top of your pack or head when it’s raining. In case you’re worried about it rusting, please refer to the following gentle care instructions.
To gently care for your wok should it become a bit rusty, simply scrub the living plankshit out of it with anything you find. A copper or stainless steel scrubbing pad, sand on a beach, mud with rocks in it, the face of someone you are not entirely fond of. It is a twenty dollar carbon steel wok. A beat up, broken in wok is a treasure and a huge asset to your well being, both calorie wise and mental health wise, because you don’t have to worry you ruined your expensive pan by slightly mistreating it by using it as a snow shovel to dig out your car, or beat a wild animal to death that tried to eat you. Plus you can cook the wild animal now.
Forget all the BS videos about seasoning your wok with care. There’s nothing real about that. The seasoning that you achieve from baking a carbon steel wok in an oven with crisco or flaxseed oil etc is so thin and useless that a single can of tomato soup will strip it. In fact, if you really want to clean your wok for another use by getting all the black off of it, simply heat up some acidic tomato paste or pasta sauce and it will lift most of it off with little effort. It’s a good idea to sacrifice a half cup of tomato sauce anyway to clean your wok if you need to make a tomato based dish. This keeps you from having all the little black floaties you would otherwise have in your dish.
First up: Breakfast: Bacon, Eggs, Perfect Home Fries
The Bacon We will be reusing the fat for multiple meals. Cook SLOW for best results. We want to render the fat off of the bacon and reuse it to make home fries, eggs and fried chicken.
The first thing I want you to do is go to the store, pick up a package of regular, thinly sliced, water smoked bacon. Hold it in your hand and look at it. Then drop it like you’re the devil and you realized you’re holding a cup of holy water. Water smoked bacon is mostly water, and you have to boil off a cup of water before you even start to render fat from the bacon. Next, pick up any extra thick cut bacon you can find in a one kilogram or 2.2 pound package. Look at it, then gently hold it to your face and say these words: Thank you. Pay for it. Take it home. For this post I had to get a 375g pack of extra thick cut because they were out of the 1kg packages. I used the whole 375g pack for this post.
For this example we are going to assume that you might be trying to stretch every resource to its maximum potential, so the bacon fat is the star of the show for a little while.
We are going to take about ⅓ to ½ (or all) of this 2.2 pound or 1kg package of bacon and cook it until it’s nice and crispy just the way I like. In a wok, you can take out bacon as it reaches various stages of completion to suit personal preference. Look for the bubbles of life when you have basically reached deep fryer heaven.
Next is the home fries. Leave the bacon fat in the wok. Filter it through a paper towel or coffee filter if you care about bacon bits in your home fries. Weirdo. The cut size is vital. Too small and they will get soft and disintegrate. Too large and the center will never get soft before the outside is charred black. Slicing an average potato once longwise and then three to four the other way is just about right. I tend to leave the skin on and just scrub them clean before slicing.
Be sure to rinse them at least twice to remove all the starch. When the water is clear, strain super well and pat dryish with some paper towels.
This is very, mucho, extremely important: This is a TWO stage cooking process. You want to bring the bacon oil up to a temperature that produces a very gentle boil for maybe 6 to 10 minutes taking all variables into consideration, like potato size, geographic location, altitude etc. We can all agree we want home fries. Once you see that the fries are sorta gettin’ there and before they are dark but you can see they have the beginnings of a crispy coating on them, crank it up and finish them off to crispy. This will give you a nice crispy outer and a perfect, soft inner. Please for the love of all that is right and good in this world, do not fall for all that french cooking plankshit about cooking them twice and cooling them completely in between. Smack!!!
Next. Eggs. Drain out all the bacon oil into a bowl or cup and use a tablespoon or so to cook your eggs.
PRO TIP: You can use MULTIPLE and VARIOUS sized lids on your wok. Become a garage sale, thrift store lid nerd. Notice the nice little glass lid with vent hole for my eggs. An absolutely, super LOW temperature is needed for eggs. Carbon steel is likely the fastest conducting cookware other than a single ply stainless steel camp pan, but carbon steel has the ability to still distribute heat evenly. I get perfect, sunny side up eggs every time that slide right out.
The more I cook with my wok, the more my stainless steel and cast iron stay on the rack. Factoid: I want to be a Wok Wizard when the SHTF because I can bug out with it and I can bug in with it like a MinnowMama Plucker.
Filter the bacon oil through a paper towel and set aside for later use.
Next time: Fried chicken, baking a cake and a small bonus.
PRO TIP: soak makeup remover pads in the oil and put them in the freezer to use for fire starters or trap bait. An oil soaked makeup pad will burn through two feet of snow before going out.
Have a great wok!
