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So I bought my first wok, I was trying to season it at my parents house because I have electric stove at home. I guess I messed up it, for some reason it took longer than I expected (like 1.5 hours). When I got home I tried to cook something in it, but it leaves small back crumps/pieces. I tried to clean the wok with sponge and now it looks that the last year is kind of coming of from the wok.

Not sure if it's still salvageable?

my process of seasoning was cleaning it with soap and sponge, applying little layers of oil and keeping it burn/absorbed. I watched some tutorials online, it just felt that my wok is changing color slower.

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  • Welcome to SA! Can you explain how you heated the wok and applied the oil in more detail? Because clearly you did do something wrong, but it's not clear from your description what it was.
    – FuzzyChef
    Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 16:42
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    If your electric stove has an oven, that's actually a great place to season your wok, if it fits in the oven. Looks rather like you went for "burn" when "burn" is not a term I'd associate with any part of seasoning other than cleaning off a bad job or filthy pan to start fresh. I think you can simply follow the stock seasoning cast iron answer here, the differences between cast and steel are quite minor for seasoning. cooking.stackexchange.com/a/647/34242
    – Ecnerwal
    Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 16:53
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    Hi! It is normal for the seasoning to not go well at first try, especially with carbon steel. I closed with the closest-looking badly seasoned pans as the duplicate target, but it is actually not so important what the failed seasoning looks like. Just strip the seasoning and start over, then repeat as frequently as you need to - I linked our main questions on both in the duplicate targets too.
    – rumtscho ♦
    Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 17:44
  • What colour was it when you started? Black[ish] or dull 'silver'? That looks like it was either pre-seasoned [unlikely looking at the end result] or… non-stick. if it was actually dull silver, then what you may have done is not polymerised the oil but just burned it - so what is shedding is just carbonised oil, not polymerised oil. You'd need to start over. If it was non-stick [perhaps less likely] then you've burned off the original coating. Non-stick doesn't need seasoning.]
    – Tetsujin
    Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 17:45
  • @FuzzyChef I use dish-cloth to applied oil and preheated wok, when it stopped smoking I applied next layer. but I probably used to much oil because color changing was slower than I expected
    – murdoc
    Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 19:43

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Maybe a setback, but it is hard to "ruin" a pan. Clean well. Scrape or use a scrub pad to get as smooth as possible. Begin seasoning again. Don't worry about achieving a perfect result after one seasoning. It takes time to build up, and simply happens through use. Be patient, it might take months. Just make sure to leave a smooth surface after cooking, and over time you will be fine.

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  • Yeah, you can always salvage a wok. The worst possibility is that you need to scrub/burn off all failed seasoning and start over.
    – FuzzyChef
    Commented Sep 3, 2022 at 18:48

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