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Grace Young, author of The Breath of a Wok, and Tane Chan, owner of The Wok Shop in San Francisco, both the children of immigrants from Canton, undertook separate projects to learn all they could about the Chinese cooking pan.
And what the two have found out will come in handy for almost any American cook considering buying a wok.
What wok should an American cook buy? Made from what material? What size should it be? What style -- flat or round bottomed? What about handles? Does the wok need to be seasoned? It's enough to confuse almost anybody.
Chan set out to learn about woks more than 30 years ago; Young's journey, which included trips to China, was more recent. But both found that woks come in several styles, various sizes and a large variety of materials.
The styles include the round-bottomed wok, which is used in south China; the flat-bottomed pan, which cooks closer to an American stove's heat; and the pow wok, also called the Beijing or Peking pan because it is frequently used in northern China. It has a round bottom with a long, hollow metal handle that its users find ideal for the pao, or flipping, motion they've seen on The Iron Chef,...