Whether it's an iron wok or a stainless steel pot, each type of cookware has its own pros and cons. Whether it's healthy or not depends on the ingredients and its intended use. Before answering this question, let's first analyze the pros and cons of various materials.
Iron Wok — Specialized for Stir-frying
Advantages: Good heat conduction; Good heat retention; Basically non-stick.
Disadvantages: Heavy; A bit troublesome to clean and maintain; Prone to rust.
More specifically, iron woks are divided into cast iron woks and wrought iron woks.
Cast Iron Wok — Made by melting gray cast iron and pouring it into a mold.
Advantages: Heats up slowly, suitable for deep-frying and stewing, and not prone to burning food; Daily maintenance is relatively simple, just clean it promptly after cooking to prevent rust; Most importantly, it's much cheaper than a wrought iron wok; High heat dissipation rate.
Disadvantages: Cast iron is thicker, so the heat transfer effect is slightly worse, requiring longer cooking times and wasting more fuel (electricity) compared to a wrought iron wok.
Wrought Iron Wok — Also known as a forged iron wok, made by forging and pressing wrought iron.
Advantages: The wok is thinner, so it heats up quickly, and food cooks faster.
Disadvantages: More expensive; Not easy to clean, it needs to be scrubbed clean and dried thoroughly after use, otherwise it will rust easily; Contact with salt, soy sauce, vinegar, etc., can easily cause etching, holes, and rust; It can become soft and deformed upon impact.
The Chinese iron wok, though unassuming in appearance, is the perfect choice for Chinese stir-frying—a feat other materials simply can't match. If we look just at the material, the iron wok is the healthiest and safest, as it hardly leaches any harmful substances and is not easily oxidized. To have lasted for a thousand years without disappearing, the iron wok is truly formidable, and I have to admire it.
However, no pot in this world is perfect. Even the iron wok has some health concerns:
First, high-temperature stir-frying can easily make the food "heaty" (a concept in traditional Chinese medicine) to eat;
Second, high temperatures usually require a lot of oil, and a high-oil diet is not advisable;
Furthermore, if you use little oil and don't stir the food in time, it can easily char and stick to the wok. Burnt food not only loses its nutrients but may also produce carcinogens. If the food is inedible, what's the point of the pot?
For further reading: Can an iron wok really supplement iron?
An iron wok can indeed increase the iron content in our food. CCTV's "Is It True?" program conducted experiments and investigations on this.
Experimental materials: One iron wok, one aluminum alloy pot, 4 tomatoes.
Experimental process:
1. The tomatoes were chopped and divided into two equal parts, which were then stir-fried separately in the iron wok and the aluminum alloy pot.
2. After stir-frying for 5 minutes, the cooked tomatoes from each pot were placed in separate bowls and labeled.
3. These two bowls of tomatoes were sent to the Beijing Center for Physical and Chemical Analysis to test their iron content.
Test results:
The test found that the tomatoes stir-fried in the aluminum alloy pot had an iron content of 1.5 mg/kg, while those stir-fried in the iron wok had an iron content of 23.5 mg/kg, 15 times that of the aluminum alloy pot.
From this number, it seems that stir-frying tomatoes in an iron wok can indeed increase the iron content. However, whether the iron that gets into the food can be absorbed by the body is another matter.
In fact, the type of iron that the human body absorbs and utilizes more easily is heme iron, while the iron from the wok into the food is non-heme iron (ferric iron), which the body absorbs and utilizes less efficiently.
Therefore, the claim that stir-frying with an iron wok can supplement iron is not very reliable.
Aluminum Pot — Best to Avoid
Advantages: Lightweight; Good thermal conductivity; Not prone to rust; Saves fuel and time.
Disadvantages: At high temperatures, and when hit with a metal spatula, aluminum components can be released, and excessive intake can lead to dementia.
Generally speaking, if aluminum products are only used to hold water, very little aluminum is leached. Using a commercial aluminum pot to cook rice or boil water also results in minimal leaching of aluminum. However, under acidic or high-temperature conditions, the amount of aluminum leached is positively correlated with the acidity and temperature. Direct contact with acidic food will also corrode an aluminum pot.
To avoid risks, it is recommended to avoid using aluminum pots for cooking. If you must use one, choose an aluminum alloy product, as it leaches almost no aluminum and is less harmful to the body.
Non-stick Pan — Suitable for Frying and Stir-frying
Advantages: Lightweight; Beautiful; Easy to clean; Good non-stick properties; Saves oil; Less smoke.
Disadvantages: The coating will peel off over time, making the appearance unattractive; Not suitable for high-temperature frying; The coating cannot be used with a metal spatula.
A non-stick pan is so-called because cooking doesn't stick to the bottom, thanks to a non-stick coating on its base. A non-stick pan can easily fry and stir food without sticking, reducing the amount of oil needed and making it safe for beginners to use. However, if the cooking temperature exceeds 300°C, the non-stick coating will be destroyed and decompose into harmful substances.
Moreover, non-stick pans that use any non-ceramic non-stick coating should not be used to cook acidic foods. This is because acidic food can easily corrode the metal body. Once the body is corroded, it will expand, causing the coating to bubble up and peel off over a large area.