How to Revive a Rusty Wok & Daily Wok Maintenance | All your questions answered! | The Woks of Life

you know what I think we should use the small walk today I agree okay I have one in the basement let's go now I have a couple of walks somewhere here I don't remember exactly where I put it it should be here somewhere in the basement oh here it is oh boy look at these babies they're a little bit uh rusted but you know what some people always say throw these out a lot of people get discouraged but we're going to show you how to restore these walks might as well let's go hi everyone today I'm going to show you how to rehab a rusty walk and we went looking for a couple of walks cuz I I wanted to use a smaller walk today and we found a couple in the basement carbon steel walks are definitely more prone to rust as are these uh you know Chinese Cleavers you know they're they're made of like a carbon steel I always have readers that uh ask me oh I have this Rusty walk what do I do should I just Chuck it throw it away but absolutely not these both of these are carbon steel walks and they got a lot of life to them this is a a round bottom walk pretty Rusty not terribly the back is Rusty this other walks has a little bit kind of a nasty rough spot on it down here probably uh wasn't dried properly or a little bit of water got on it somehow and it was just left don't fret I've rehabbed a lot more rustier ones than in this uh and I'm going to show you how to do that today walks get rusty basically because they're not properly uh cared for actually after you're cooking and you're finished cooking people will wash their walk and some people use soap and you shouldn't unless it's super greasy and you just want to cut some of the grease out but they'll wash it scrub it down and then they'll put it away wipe it down lightly put it away and there's still a lot of of moisture in that walk and if it's kept in a slightly damp place it's going to rust and worse yet if you leave standing water in it or anything like that it'll rust one other really common thing that happens is if you if you're steaming so if you steam with this walk and you leave the water in without cleaning it if you leave some water in for even an hour or two you'll see a ring that starts to form with uh with rust because the water has some time to work another reason why rocks walks can get rusty is if you're cooking with something acidic right so so this actually aside from these few rust spots has a pretty decent patina on it it's kind of black and you know uh uh it's been worn this walk's definitely been used but if I was to cook a super uh vinegary sauce like a sweet and pungent pork right that has a a lot of vinegar in it and you boil it in here and you cook the sauce after you take it out you must wash it immediately even if you don't wash even if you do wash it immediately you'll see like hey what happened well the vinegar kind of ate through the uh the patina if that's not cared for right away it makes it a lot easier to rust because that patina kind of is like a protective coating that prevents rust um and it's also a non-stick uh so you you definitely want to take care of that or if you're cooking a super vinegary sauce best to use stainless steel now what happens if that happens and you're like oh my God I just ruined this walk do I have to reason it not really you you basically just some of the patina just came off you give it a good scrub and and what do you do you just keep cooking with it right and the more you cook with it the patina will build up again and then you'll be back to normal after after after sometime the more you cook with it the quicker it's going to come back so that's the solution rust is basically basically iron people joke about it it's like if you have a little rust you get a little extra iron you don't have to take so much iron in your pill and I think that's really the case it's not it's not that so bad but you know I certainly wouldn't want to eat this just it's not appetizing in your food it's going to give your food metallic taste of course goes without saying so you want to actually scrub everything off the rust really doesn't isn't harmful it's not certainly not toxic now I have a question that people ask me all the time right look at that he's like oh this uh this walk is super rusted on the bottom that's true but you're really not going to eat off of this right you're not going to cook on it at all and you know I see you get all this rust that's the reason why You' clean it so we're going to scrub it off today um and and clean off the surface rust but if there's still a little bit of rust and and it happens it's no big deal because you really don't want to oil the bottom of your walk just keep it dry uh because oiling it obviously will create extra smoke and you don't want to do that so the way you really keep your walk pristine and rust free is that you you follow that regimen cook put it back on the stove and you heat it over the flame or over your electric stove with an active heat so all the water evaporates and you can pour off any water do it a couple times it's okay because the water does settle into the middle and after you heat it uh you don't want it doesn't have to be until smoking but you know you just heat it so it evaporates totally and then you go with your paper towel and a few drops of oil and you're all good you could use one of these green pad scrubbers you know this is kind of worn so it's uh it's kind of nice actually because it just gives you a little bit of a a quick scrub rather than the new ones which we're going to use today it's going to scrub it's going to be more aggressive more abrasive it's going to scrub this rust off now another thing that we have is this little bamboo brush kind of looks like a toilet brush I know but and this is what old school uses a lot of people use this and some some of these uh brushes are just basically like a like a kind of like a a horse hair brush and you scrub it like that they're actually made out of bamboo fibers natural fibers so care Continued Care I should say cook scrub light scrub dry and oil that's the regimen you follow that regimen your walk's not going to rust and you're going to build a beautiful patina over time that you'll going to be proud of and get nonstick uh surface nonstick cooking all right I got this Rusty bottom walk first and this one this one was uh was seasoned previously and it's got a little bit few pits in here but you know what I got I got a lot of rust on my hands before so I'm going to give this bottom a first quick cleaning this is an old sponge okay you can see the rust build up here so let's give it a good scrub and that's all I'm going to do for the bottom because we're going to heat this bottom up and dry it out and hopefully it doesn't rust as much so I just got the surface rust off I mean if you want to spend the time and really scrub it let's give this a little a little bit more you know most of this rust is is is off which is which is fine but if you really want to scrub it I know I people who who've used Grinders and what have you to to grind off all the rust that's what you want to do you can but I don't think it's necessary a little rust on the bottom not going to affect so much your uh your cooking it's just going to affect like my hands or your storage space so next we're going to we're going to tackle this bottom of this the inside of the walk walk that we're interested in so I give this a little bit of a scrub now so you can see some scratches here there's some scratches here maybe here a little bit and people say like oh what's happening to this uh walk if did I ruin it of course you didn't a few scratches not going to ruin anything I think I I think I got some scratches here because there was an impurity in this dot here and I was trying to get it out the very first time I remember correctly you got a little bit of rust up here it's more rusted so I'm going to take out a new scrubbing pad you can use Steel W you can CH something a little bit more aggressive but this is pretty decent surprisingly and you just give it a little bit of elbow grease and you can see starting to get a little bit off here try to get all the rust you can off that's why it's important to have a new pad that's a little bit more aggressive if you see like for example this right watch I got a new pad here if I give it a little bit of elbow grease comes right off and it's important to sometimes you want to get these little spots you can you can do a little bit of extra scrubbing like that back and forth but it's good to have like a a pattern like this and you won't get any big scratch or gouges now we have an old farm sink here as well so I'm not so worried about it cuz it's already aged but if you're worried about your your sink area and you're walk scratching it you probably want to put a little protection they make protection pads or you just put a cloth down and you're fine good homeowners advice got to take care of your stuff and you know what everything pretty much much has come off that's going to that's going to that wants to come off easy don't feel like you have to make it bright and shiny metal everywhere that's not necessary so you look at it now you see how does that look this area looks nice this area looks a little bit you know like it's got something still part of the patina left from before got a little still from from seasoning it the first time a little bluish metal it's okay no big deal see the detail of the Walk This is actually the beginning of your patina your non-stick patina but why does it have that color that's the way it is it's it's it's should be more black it's basically old food you know and people say like oh do you want to cook with your old food it's like well do you think it's beneficial to just scrub that off and start fresh again not necessarily no because you can if you like is it coming off it'll come off if I scrub hard enough cuz there's still a little ring here too should people be worried about that not really it's all it's all what you your your your your judgment but you know I could scrub this more but it's it's probably a ring from sauce or or something you know you don't have to go crazy like this sometimes if you if this really bothers you you know this this piece here yeah you could take it off and you you go against the grains you know 90° of where where that is and it'll come off if this bothers you take it off but if it doesn't it's no big deal either the walk is going to be your your walk is going to be a little bit multicolored uh you know from the seasoning anyway it's perfectly normal so for me I would stop right here all right so we're going to give a everything a quick rinse again it looks like an old walk but it looks like it's a parsley seasoned walk it's fine now we're going to go over to the stove and Heat this up all right this is walk number two this walk is that hollow hollow handled walk which I actually I prefer this hollow handled walk it's a it's slightly thinner it's a little bit lighter um has some rust on the bottom too so we're going to we're just going to lightly scrub that off and I'm going to use an old P okay and the rust comes right off this is an older walk that's been cooked on more so you know when people say that hey I you know I'm thinking about throwing this walk away it's I cooked a lot on it but started rusting it's like no don't do that this walk still has a lot of life in it it's still a little bit of r no you want to get it better no I don't care about it the bottom of the Walk I would recommend not spending too much time on it you just want to get some of the surface rust off and you're good this is the the spot that we have to worry about all all where this this is and you can see that the the the edge of edges of the Walk are still nice and seasoned it's a little rough because of the seasoning is is the patina is building up and there's a few schools of thought some people let that build and thicken for me I like to actually keep it somewhat clean and smooth basically I want to take the rough stuff off and this old rust off with the old one and then use the newer more aggressive cleaner pad for when I'm scrubbing so that's the reason why I'm doing that so you see that rust comes right off and again I'm going to use a circular pattern and up here there's a little bit of Grease buildup should you burn that off and reason the whole thing you could but there's no reason to I'm just going to go in a circular motion and almost sort of Smooths that off and takes the food particles off and and any rust buildup okay yeah it's a little bit smoother already now you see this where this rust really rusty spot off where we scrubbed it I'm going to give everything another Scrub but I just want to make a a point a real comment here that there's still some Rust here it's it's brown here and it just took this patina off completely where it rusted and now you got a nice patina here but a kind of a a a crapp old rusted surface here which is not good we're going to try to scrub that down you can see now we got more of the rust off this is the new scouring pad that's more aggressive now and you can see what I mean by it's more aggressive it's it's just cleaning better so you want to sort of use a circular motion is nice and you could just feel that coming off the old a little bit of the old patina coming off but the you know there's patina and then there's greas and and and food buildup and that's what this is up on the edge of side this is not really a good patina this is like a rough food buildup this is a really smooth nice nonstick patina right here and this has rusted the patina has come off we're just going to continue cooking on this and and oiling it and drying it and then this we'll turn into this soon enough still an old Walk we're not trying to take off everything down to bare metal that would be counterproductive you're just trying to get the rust off and then just continue building the patin where we left off so you can see there's a lot of buildup on here and we're just going to if you have one of these it's nice can blast it a little bit I use warm water see all that rust and particles that coming off there and this walk is now ready to be dried and to cook on this is a beautiful walk if you have if you have uh a walk that has similar kind of look and patina but but a lot of rust on it you do exactly what I just did scrub it do do a quick scrub with a sacrificial pad so you don't ruin these pads or if you don't have one just use the new pad and then scrub it smooth make sure all the all the rust is off rinse it and then let's go to the stove okay we're at the stove now we still got some water in here just going to dump it off at the sink and I'm going to turn on the flame so we're going to let that heat and you can see how it's evaporating now and you can actually see no there's not that much rust sometimes the surface rust will come back a little bit but this is pretty good so I'm going to so there's still a couple of drops of water on I'm going to turn the heat down a little bit okay so the walk has pretty much dried out and we're not going to reason this walk like we like it's new people have asked me hey should I reason this walk if I look at this walk even though it's got this bare spot over here and it's hot be careful when you touch that in this bare spot over here I'm not going to completely reason this walk to burn everything off to start you know from from from square one like it was a new walk because this is really nicely seasoned all we did was we took a layer off of the seasoning off and we took a layer of the rust off I would say that this takes a few months if not close to a year to get to this point so if you if you season it to be new right then you're basically burning everything off and starting from scratch all the way down to bare metal and there's really no reason to do that and I know people think that that hey I ruined the seasoning and and there's rust in there and I'd have to start from square one that's actually a fallacy you don't really have to do that all you got to do is get back to something like this where you got a little bit of patina got a little bit of bare metal it's okay and this this is ready to go so we're going to take some avocado oil high smoke point oil a high smoke point put a few drops in there it's pretty it's pretty hot but it's not it's just kind of warm actually you can see the the way the oil flows on this but you just put a few drops of oil I don't know what is that maybe a half a teaspoon of oil and then you just take a normal paper towel and then you just wipe it down just like that and you're going to do this every single time look how look how nice that is and this now that you've gotten the moisture out of the walk this oil will penetrate into all those little nooks and crannies for all you science people out there and give you a non-stick surface now what's that what's that you say so that's residue from your patina and just like cooking with a cast iron pan you're going to get the same kind of residue with a carbon steel walk and it's perfectly fine that's why some people if they're horrified by this I would recommend that you get stainless steel cookware so now this walk is ready to cook on or it's ready for storage so we're going to set this aside and I'm going to go and get the other walk that we worked on so this walk after we after we uh scrubbed it it sat literally for just a few minutes and you can see that there's a little bit of surface rust on here it's okay no need to panic we're just going to go and do the same thing going to heat this up make sure this water evaporates so there's still you can still see a little bit of rust on this walk this walk there's a couple of things that you could do with this walk this walk is a newer walk it hasn't been used as much you could start from square one and reason this walk and reburn everything or again leave it here and continue the way it's going and again there's a little surface rust here so we're actually wiping a lot of this any kind of this light surface rust with this oil and letting the oil penetrate the walk so let me so this is pretty dirty I will use a new one and let's add a little bit more oil it's okay it's already has quite a bit of oil oil but uh adding more never hurts going to wipe all this down make sure we get the rust off of there and this oil penetrates in let's see what it looks like so we got that's that's a little bit of rust and it's a little bit of uh patina also I'm going to fold this out and again a little bit of surface rust is not toxic if you're super worried about it you go to the sink you give it a little bit of uh a washing a rinsing [Applause] okay rinse that off really nice and now look how when it's oiled look at how the water beads now I'm going to heat it back up again if you're a little impatient like I am you dab it or you just let it heat up and evaporate I've got a clean paper towel going to put a few more drops of oil in here so I'm going to wipe this down again now that is patina that's really not rust that's part of your patina coming off all right so we've got this this walk that's uh slightly used we've restored it and you know notice there's a little bit of dark spots and patina perfectly normal because as you cook with it that's what's going to happen you're going to get little spots there it's okay just keep cooking cook scrub it lightly scrub dry on the on the stove just like this until there's no more water even if it's slightly smoking it's okay let it cool down slightly put your oil down wipe it down with a towel just like it is is right now a paper towel do you have little brown spots it's okay don't worry this is ready to cook on this is ready to store you're good that's how you revive your rusty walk and we have other posts on how to season new walks how to care for your walk how to which walk to buy so like And subscribe if you like this video all right and that's how you revive your action action action sorry ready yes I

Channel: The Woks of Life

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Id: yCdPQwia9jM

Length: 23min 43sec (1423 seconds)

Published: Thu Feb 22 2024