When I was 11, my Irish American stepdad came home with a $10 wok and a used paperback Chinese cookbook. Chinese food was a treat reserved for the rare occasions when we ate out at local Cantonese ...

Traditional woks. These have a round bottom and sloped ... The sloped sides are a bit cooler and you can use them to hold ...

The round bottom of a proper wok is the key to a decent stir fry, but it also makes it hard to use on traditional Western stoves. That’s why many woks end up in a dark kitchen cabinet ...