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I don't braise in the wok for just those reasons.

I'd say "Yes". I often make curries in my woks and have never had a problem. Also, some Chinese dishes can be rather acidic - especially when I make them!

Yes. It didn't come with the wok. I bought it separately. In fact, woks seldom come with lids here.

One question for wok users about braising things - one of the curries I make has tamarind in it, which is acidic. I'm concerned about cooking this dish in my well seasoned carbon steel wok because I'm nervous that the acid will break down my seasoning and A) make me have to reseason every time I make that dish and B) will taint my curry with dissolved seasoning! Are my concerns unfounded?

My recently purchased wok came with a solid aluminum lid with wooden knob... not that I've used the cover yet... lately, anything that needs steaming gets done in the CSO

I have pretty much the exact same lid. But I remember my first wok's lid was solid (aluminum I'm sure, with a wooden knob handle atop); it had no window into what was going on. Are these a fairly recent innovation?

It would, but food is seldom portioned out in China - at home or in restaurants. We are 100% into family style dining, even when there are just two of us. Damn it! Even when it's just me. But of course, there are no rules! Use your wok the way that works most efficently and comfortably for you!

I use three tools for stir fry in the wok. First I make a spicy oil with garlic, ginger and dry red chiles, so I need a slotted spoon strainer similar to the one @liuzhou shows above to remove and toss the sizzling crispies before the garlic colors. Then I use a large utility spoon to put some of the oil into a small bowl to be added as needed. The real work is done by the long handled scoop/shovel. I don't have a ladle for the wok. It seems like that would be most useful for large quantities that are portioned out. Since we are only two people it's easy enough to pour/ slide/push the finished dish into a serving bowl.

Yes, length. The cooking chopstics below are 16½ inches / 42 cm long, as opposed to the regular eating chopsticks at 9½ / 24. I do have tongs but never use them in the wok for some reason. More used in skillets.

Forgot the essential wok lid - also used when steaming.

Here are my main tools of wokery. Ladle (勺子 - sháo zi), scoop / spatula (铲子 - chǎn zi)，drainer/ sieve ( 笊篱 - zhào li)- one of many. Cooking chopsticks (长筷 - cháng kuài), strainer (漏勺 - lòu sháo), fish lifter/turner bamboo strainer, plate lifter, steamer stand* *goes in the wok, plate of food on top for steaming. plate lifter to remove hot plate when food is ready. Missing is my bamboo wok brush (炊帚 - chuī zhou. Threw it away a couple of days ago, but haven't yet replaced it. Maybe later today.

Plastic wouldn't last three minutes near my wok. I know from bitter experience!

I use the Wok Shovel/Spatula all of the time when I cook in my wok. No ladle, though I have seen it being used in Chinese cooking videos (in restaurant kitchens mostly). I also have a spider to help scoop fried things out of the oil in the wok. My cheap-o five dollar sheet-metal wok is finally getting some good "wok hei". As Mitch mentioned with his tools, the wood handle on my wok is a little loose but the wok still works great on my stove's electric coil burners (which I despise).

I thought I had posted this before, but apparently not. I did search. I wrote it in 2009. Slightly edited today. I decided many years ago that I wasn’t going to survive in China unless I was willing to do something utterly ridiculous every now and again. Perhaps one day I will get round to confessing to some of the more insane moments but in the meantime you have to be content with this. A few days ago, I had a long online chat with a close Chinese friend who moved from Guangxi to Australia some years ago. She has now married a local and taken up Australian citizenship. Like many a Chinese expat, she has opened a restaurant, Chongqing Wanzhou Fish BBQ House in Melbourne. If you are passing, do drop in. Tell her I sent you. During the conversation, I teased her for opening a restaurant despite her well known inability to cook and she retorted by offering me a job as her chef! This arose from an incident many years ago, to which she was a witness. Another friend was opening a restaurant here in Liuzhou and I was there a couple of days before the scheduled opening night, helping the owner to test the beer, an activity to which I applied my full attention to detail and which took most of the afternoon. The owner had invited a group of special and influential guests for a preview of her new establishment that evening. Unfortunately, just before they were due to arrive we learned that the chef had managed to poison himself or something and was unable to perform. The owner then ran around in circles panicking and generally seeing her dreams of restaurant success pouring down the drain. After a few minutes she got herself relatively under control and despite still hyper-ventilating managed to croak at me, “Do something!” I did. I poured another beer. “No! Really do something!” “Like what?” I wittily replied, while trying to give my full attention to judging the suitability of the beer as a beverage in a top class eatery. “Like cook!” she whimpered. “Of all the 1.4 billion people in China, the only person you can think of to cook for your guests is the drunken foreigner in the corner? You are opening a Chinese restaurant in China, into which you have sunk not only your life savings but those of your entire extended family and a few neighbours and you are suggesting that the gastronomic creativity behind the launch of this venture should be undertaken by a drunken foreigner who has never been in a commercial kitchen in his life?” “Yes. I have no choice.” For reasons which can only demonstrate the strength of the local brew (or the quantity tested) this suddenly seemed to make some sort of sense and I vaguely recall agreeing (or that’s what they told me afterwards). I decide that there was no chance of me cooking the existing menu as I had never heard of 80% of the dishes, never mind being in possession of the mysteries of their recipes, so a new limited menu of dishes was drawn up and was to be presented as a special ‘tasting menu’. In other words, the guests would be given what I decided to cook, whether they liked it or not. The only provision was that the food should be Chinese. That ruled out my killer baked beans on toast. A lackey was sent off on her bike to the market to acquire the ingredients which the kitchen did not possess, my dishes being somewhat off menu. Lackey No. 2 was set to chopping stuff while I spent half an hour or so working out how to turn on the gas. Lackey No. 1 returned minus half the ingredients, which she claimed the local market did not have, so I set her to washing and chopping what she had bought, while I jumped in a taxi and shot off to my favourite market where I found everything I thought I needed. When I got back, lackey No. 1 was surprised to see that I had found the stuff she was sure didn’t exist. Finally, with all the lackey aid, everything was ready – chopped, sliced, minced, ground etc and I had worked out the rudiments of turning the heat up and down etc. I decided that cooking bucketloads of rice could be trusted to a menial and I relaxed with a beer to await my customers. Then, another beer to wash that one down. Eventually, someone woke me up to tell me that the customers had arrived, thus totally ruining my dream that I was about to be the chef in a Chinese restaurant in China. A couple of shakes of the head and I realised that it wasn’t a dream. It had the makings of a nightmare, though. Grabbing a beer to steady my nerves, I headed for the kitchen and work. God! It’s hard work. Those woks weigh a ton even when empty and the kitchen was damned hot. I quickly sweated out all the day’s beer and more. Lackey No. 1 was commissioned to pass me vegetables, knives, condiments etc on order. I was too harassed to even worry about getting the Chinese right. I yelled something and she delivered. Lackey 2 was given the onerous task of keeping me supplied with liquid refreshment in case I died of dehydration mid way through a stir-fry. Somehow all the dishes got cooked and passed to the waiters who disappeared into the depths of the restaurant and were never seen again – well the waiters were seen again, but not the dishes. I collapsed in the corner, dripping sweat and called for a celebratory beer. To celebrate finishing the cooking without having passed out, set fire to myself or dropped the woks which had become heavier and heavier as the service went on. I now waited to hear the roars of complaint about the dishes. After what seemed like hours, the head waitress (the one who who greets customers and is always rather pretty and dressed in a sexy qipao (cheongsam) arrived and requested that I get myself in gear and report to the private dining room, where the guests were hiding. It seems that my friend, who was dining with her guests, had failed to inform her guests of the unusual catering arrangement and had surprised them by suggesting she introduce the chef, not something that usually happens in Chinese restaurants. But after several bottles of Chinese gut rot (rice wine) they were amenable. When I turned up, they thought that this was a great joke. They didn’t believe that I had cooked, but I was just glad to see that they had eaten most of the food and weren’t complaining. This I put down to the fact that they were all too drunk to notice the food, which would be typical for a Chinese banquet. I retired to the bar and thought it was probably time to have a beer. Next morning I woke up in pain. The head was a bit cloudy and my mouth tasted like a particularly rancid panda had spent the night there (have you ever smelled a panda?) but the real pain was in my arms. They were virtually dead. It was all I could do to scratch myself. Those woks! I decided there and then to give up all the dreams I ever had or would ever have of getting into a culinary career. I now know which side of the pass is the best. The real chef eventually recovered and the restaurant had its public opening night without problem. A year later it went bust. Not my fault!

My building has no gas service, so everything is electric. A standard US electric oven uses both 240V (for the heating elements) and 120V (for the controls/convection fan, etc). I decided not to get a standard US oven, which typically utilizes a 240V 40 or 50A circuit breaker (I use my CSO - there's only 2 of us - the amount of times I really need a full size oven I can count on one hand, especially since we're no longer having big parties and I'm cooking for liek 12 people at once or apps for 40) - so, instead, I had them install a 240V 30A breaker that just feeds a duplex 240V outlet (with 6-20R receptacles) which I will use for 2 240V induction burners. I got one 3500W cheap one - great for bringing a pot of water to boil, etc. and I'm going to get a Vollrath 2600W fancy induction unit which you can vary the power level in 1% increments or use temp mode and set a temp - it has both a pan sensor (supposedly the most accurate in the industry) and also a liquid probe which will be great for deep frying. it's like a control freak but 1/2 the price. They make it in 3500 and 4600W power levels, but I don't think it's necessary to have 2 super high power ones. I think the 2600W one will still be more powerful than the gas burner in my old apartment. Finally, I got a 15,000BTU butane burner (liek what she uses on hot thai kitchen) and I've used it a couple times - it was great for stir frying in the wok (albeit a little light, so it wants to move around a bit) but was almost too powerful for simmering a curry - in fact, I haven't taken it past 1/2 power yet because it makes so much heat, the sauce splatters all over.

Yes, restaurant chefs and cooks more often use ladles (勺子 - sháo zi), but it's important to remember that home cooking and restaurant cooking are very different in many ways. Home cooks usually use wok spatulas / scoops (铲子 - chǎn zi) Never heard of a 'sled' in that meaning before! I use both scoops and ladles, but I'm a show off. I have the 30 inch scoop and a similar size ladle, but they are just for fun / decoration. I've never cooked with them at home. Only in a restaurant. Photos maybe tomorrow.

for my mise, I usually put separate piles on a small plate, then use the sled to push each pile into the wok as needed. BTW, speaking of wok, I just got a relatively inexpensive 240V 3500W induction hob. It's not that controllable, but from the little I've used it so far (I've stir fried some morning glory and some bok choy), it's great with my carbon steel wok. I can get a great sear and char on things, then turn it down so it doesn't light the whole place on fire....

I use a wok spatula I've had for years, but almost every professional Chinese cooking video I've seen, they're using the ladle, so wondering what the major differences are apart from the obvious (that the ladle can hold liquid)

I use the wok sled all the time. I can't read all of your hieroglyphics, but the middle says Hong Kong.

I've had these wok tools ever since purchasing my first wok some 40 + years ago: 14" long, maybe they are cast iron or carbon steel. The wooden handles came loose 39+ years ago, but surprisingly have never been lost. Now that I've resuscitated a wok (not my first one) and am using it frequently, I really like the sound these tools make when stir frying. I wish I could decipher the hieroglyphics inside the bowl of the ladle... Anyone still using these tools? And Grace Young (amongst others) has her opinions about the shovel...

Dry-frying in a wok is still a very common technique in Chinese cooking. For beans, I use the same technique as Fuchsia Dunlop gives in her "The Food of Sichuan (eG-friendly Amazon.com link)". Basically they are stir-fried in the wok with only a tablespoon or so of oil, for around 6 minutes. They are removed and some chillis, Sichuan peppercorns, finely chopped garlic, ginger and scallions are fried until fragrant then the beans returned to the wok and tossed to mix. Add salt and serve. That said, she does suggest deep-frying as an alternative.

Forgive me for being late to the discussion. I use a stainless steel wok shovel, similar to what @liuzhou posted. One of my happiest kitchen purchases of all time. I am also fond of wooden wok implements but I don't as a rule use wood for meat. If I crumbled ground meat adding it to the pan I'd be vainly scrubbing my greasy fingers in the sink as the ground meat charred and vaporized while the smoke alarm went off. Both of them.

I have always known such a tool as a wok shovel.

I have one, only used it a few times and it's been in a drawer for many years. I use my wooden "spoontula" (a word I just made up) that I bought at an Asian grocery years ago for stir-fries, but II use it for almost everything in a pan or wok.

I live in what is arguably one of the most culturally diverse, high quality food neighborhoods in NYC, possibly the US and maybe the world - NYC's East Village. Within a few blocks of me is a decent representation of food from almost any country (or region) you can think of, all of whom will deliver to my door (actually, the front desk in the lobby due to covid restrictions). With that being said, after roughly 6 weeks of eating almost nothing made by my own 2 hands aside from a salad (due to packing/moving/unpacking/and rehabbing the old place so I can get as much of the security deposit back as is possible after living in a place for 15 years), I was so happy last night to finally make a homemade dinner - and one I've been especially jonesing for - a Nyonya chicken curry called Ayam Buah Keluak - chicken in black nut curry. Well, sort of - I have no access to the keluak (the black nuts) that I'm aware of, and I certainly don't yet have the week it requires to process the keluak so it's not poisonous. The curry has no coconut milk - it's made with water or stock, and a paste made from the SE Asian kitchen sink - lemongrass, galangal, chillies, curry leaves, shallots, candlenuts, tamarind just being the beginning and one of the dominant flavors - shrimp paste, called belacan (pronounced bla-chen) in Malaysia/Indonesia. I make a large batch of the rempah (the spice paste) since it's time consuming, then portion and freeze - I usually get about 8-9 meals for 2 out of 1 batch of rempah, and had 2 meals worth left in the freezer. I also don't have the new kitchen fully set up yet - there are still boxes everywhere, as well as a partially assembled kitchen cart (thank you Wayfair for sending 2 of one piece and 0 of another) so it took twice as long to make as normal, but I am already loving being in this kitchen. I don't even have my induction hobs yet (there's no gas service in this building), but I did get a 15,000BTU butane powered camping stove that I used for the first time last night. Holy crap that thing is powerful! It is a lot more powerful than the largest burner in my old apartment. Most of the time I had it barely on to keep a perfect simmer, but was able to crank it up when stir frying the veggies in my carbon steel wok.