If you go to any Chinese restaurant and observe what type of woks the chef’s are using, you’ll most likely see them cooking with carbon steel or cast iron. These are the two most popular materials of the traditional wok. However if you look at the pots and pans of the chef’s from the west you’ll notice they favor stainless steel. So the question I had was “does stainless steel make for a good wok?”
One of the benefits of carbon steel or cast iron is that they need to be seasoned before use. This seasoning is creating a natural non-stick coating. It actually gets better the more you cook with it. This is a great benefit in my opinion. On the other hand, the Presto stainless steel wok doesn’t have any non-stick properties at all. Quite the opposite, if you’ve ever burned anything on stainless steel you know how hard it is to get off.
As far as heat goes, both products capture and hold heat well. At least as far as I can tell there is no noticeable difference. Other than those two items, there is not much else to compare.
So is stainless steel make a good wok? It’s not bad, but if I had my choice of the three I would go with the carbon steel. Mainly for the non-stick properties and since it is a bit lighter in weight.