For the unfamiliar, a wok is deep, round-bottomed, Asian cooking pan—think frying pan meets satellite dish—that’s great for everything from stir fry to soup to steaming. Get the most wok for your money with this buying guide.

Like any other kitchen implement there are cheap woks, sturdy and economical woks, and the price point where you’re just paying a premium for fancy styling and brand names. Over at the culinary blog Serious Eats, they’ve put together a guide to purchasing a wok to help you get the best wok for your money. They explain wok shapes and handle configurations, material used for woks, and why you want to buy a spun or hand-hammered wok over a stamped one—the texture of the hammered and spun woks is critical to good stir frying.

MATERIALS

Stainless steel woks, like the All-Clad 10-inch Stir Fry Pan can be expensive and not always the best choice. Not only are they extremely heavy and difficult to maneuver, they also take a long time to heat up and cool down—a fatal flaw for something that requires rapid, on-the-fly heat adjustments like a stir-fry. Food—particularly protein—has a tendency to stick to steel.

Cast iron is a better choice, though it still takes a relatively long time to heat up and cool down. It offers a better nonstick surface. The main problem with cast iron is that when it’s too thin, it is extremely fragile—I’ve seen cast iron woks crack in half when set down too hard. But when made thick enough to be durable, they are extremely cumbersome to lift—essential for proper flipping during a stir-fry.

Carbon steel is your best bet. It heats quickly and evenly, is highly responsive to burner input, is durable, inexpensive, and when properly cared for, will end up with a practically nonstick surface. Look for carbon steel woks that are at least 14-gauge (about 2 mm thick). They should not bend when you press on the sides.

MANUFACTURE

Woks are made in three ways. Traditional hand hammered woks (like the ones they used to sell in those infomercials in the ’80′s) are an excellent choice. The slight indentations left by the hammering pattern allow you to push cooked food to the sides of the pan while adding ingredients to the center without them slipping. The only problem is that it can be difficult (impossible?) to find a hand-hammered wok with a flat bottom and a handle (more on those later).

Stamped woks are made by cutting out a circular piece of thin carbon steel and pressing it by machine into a mold. They are extremely cheap, but are completely smooth, making them difficult to stir-fry in properly. They are without fail made from low-gauge steel and prone to developing hot and cold spots, as well as feeling flimsy.

Spun woks are produced on a lathe, giving them a distinct pattern of concentric circles (see the picture inset above). This pattern offers the same advantages as a hand-hammered wok, allowing you to easily keep your food in place against the side of the pan. Spun woks can be found in heavy gauges, with flat bottoms, and with flip-friendly handles. Spun woks and hand hammered woks fortunately are both inexpensive.

SHAPE AND HANDLES

Traditional woks have a deep bowl shape designed to fit into a circular opening directly over the hearth. Unless you have a custom wok insert in your range (and if you do, you probably aren’t reading this article anyway), you want to avoid round-bottomed woks. They won’t work, period, on an electric range, and are tough to use on a gas range—even with one of those wok rings. On the other hand, woks with bottoms that are too flat defeat the purpose of a wok, making it tough to flip properly and to move food in and out of the high-heat zone.

Your best bet is a wok with a 4- to 5-inch flattened area at the bottom with gently sloping sides that flare out to between 12 and 14 inches. This will give you plenty of high-heat space for searing meats and vegetables at the bottom while still providing ample volume and room to maneuver when flipping.

As for handles, you have two choices.Cantonese-style woks (pictured in inset above) have two small handles on either side, while Northern-style woks have a single long handle and usually a smaller helper-handle on the opposite side. This is the type of wok you want. The large handle facilitates flipping and stir-frying, while the short handle makes it easy to lift.

Finally, avoid nonstick woks. Most nonstick coatings cannot handle the high heat necessary for a proper stir-fry. They start vaporizing, releasing noxious fumes long before they reach the requisite temperature. They make browning difficult, and it’s impossible to get food to stick in place against the wok when you want to clear a surface to cook in in the middle.

CARE AND MAINTENANCE

Just like a good cast iron pan, a carbon steel wok’s performance will improve the more you use it. Most come with a protective film of oil on them to prevent them from rusting or tarnishing in the store. It’s important to remove this layer before using it the first time. Scrub the wok out with hot, soapy water, dry it carefully, then place it over a burner at the highest heat possible until it starts to smoke. Carefully rotate the pan so that every area of it is exposed to this super-high heat. Rub it down with oil using a paper towel held in a pair of tongs, and you’re ready to go.

After use, avoid scrubbing the wok unless absolutely necessary. Usually a rinse and a rub-down with a soft sponge is all that’s necessary. Purists may tell you not to use soap. I do, and my wok is still well-seasoned and completely nonstick. Once rinsed, dry the wok with a kitchen towel or paper towels and rub some vegetable oil into the surface to give it a vapor-proof coating that will prevent it from rusting.

With repetitive use, the oil you heat in your wok breaks down into polymers that fill the microscopic pores in the metal’s surface, rendering the material completely nonstick. As you break in your wok, the material will gradually change from silver to brownish, and finally to a deep black. This is what you are looking for.

{via Life Hacker; and via Serious Eats, author J. Kenji Lopez-Alt; featured image via Catherine Jones Cooks}