Expert Picks: 10 Best Indoor Wok Burner for Superior Wok Cooking

Customer Review: “I have prepared several dinners in this wok. It is significantly better than my old electric wok. It is easy to use, heats very quickly, and is easy to clean with the appropriate tools. On a side note, I prepared variations of two meals included in the short recipe book. These recipes provided an excellent base and helped me determine the heat and time needed for other additions to the recipes in my variations.It is not worth docking a star; however, the product could be improved by adding a few pages to the end of the recipe booklet, which focus on specific common ingredients in recipes that gives a short paragraph on common methods of preparation, heat, and time to prepare by individual food ingredients (e.g., chicken, beef, carrots, snow peas, and so on) so one can create recipe variations.”

Customer Review: “I have had the chance to use this a few times now, and it is an excellent addition to the kitchen. If you understand how wok cooking is supposed to work, you’ll understand why this is a much better option than just using your regular kitchen cooktop. If you have cast iron cookware, you’ll understand how the enclosed pan needs to be seasoned and cared for the same way. The induction heating does a much better job with high heat than even my gas and LP ranges.If I have any criticism whatsoever, it’s that this particular Appliance has too many options. All I was looking for was to be able to turn it on set a temperature and cook. I can still do that with this machine, but it has a bunch of other features and timers that I’ll never use.This is absolutely a great appliance, and it makes it easy to get much better results with stir fry and fried rice, etc.”

Customer Review: “Somehow my original review is not here, so here goes:I have had this now for several months and have used it 15-20 times. I can literally make a stir-fry using fresh protein and microwave-defrosted frozen vegetables and canned stuff like beansprouts, water chestnuts or beans, plus some spices in under 15 minutes with this and not worry about difficult cleanup. And with fresh vegetables of course, too, which might take a little longer.Nice addition to my kitchen. Not perfect but for the price I definitely give it 5 stars. Nonstick Hex-Clad-like wok is very nice, well made too. base is solid and also seems well-made. Wok with this cooker base doesn’t get as searing-hot as a more conventional wok, but it makes a decent stir-fry and cleans up VERY easily. Don’t use metal utensils. I use a fat wood salad spoon (maybe 3 inch diameter). Hottest spot is a 6 to 8 inch circle around the center but not the center itself. This actually works pretty well. I usually use it on the hottest setting (1700). I also have a cover from an old wok that fits well, but any cover will do if needed. Cleanup is a total breeze, base hardly gets dirty at all, wipes clean and surface is almost instantly cool. Anything sticking to the wok surface cleans up easily with a little soaking and nylon scrubber pad.Fan is a little noisy, but shuts off right after cooking. Doesn’t bother me but worth noting here anyway.I do recommend this and would buy it again.”

Customer Review: “The induction hob heats really well, and seems really well made, although it is noisy when the heating unit is on (I assume because of the cooling fan). I give the hob 5 stars. The wok that comes with it, on the other hand, I would rate 0 stars, and is a poor fit with the hob, really unstable, and is best immediately replaced.. But I bought the unit for the hob, and have other woks.”

Customer Review: “This is an induction wok burner so you’ll need a wok made of a ferromagnetic material like carbon steel, cast iron, or magnetic stainless steel. Also, it’s designed for a round bottom wok. I’ve heard on an impartial youtube video that it might work with a flat bottom pan, but I’ve not tested that. The few times I’ve used it so far, I’ve found that it gets plenty hot for Cantonese style stir frying and the temperature controls work well. Moving the wok around the unit while cooking is handled well with no damage to the unit. I also have a wok burner recommended by Kenji that goes to 130,000btu. This isn’t that! But, that unit is unique and definitely something to use outside.”

Customer Review: “Buy it for the induction unit. This is better than a hot plate. It works with flat bottom plates induction compatible pots. I was so impressed with the first use, that I ordered another as a gift.Now the cons… the wok is okay, but not great. I am not impressed by the nonstick concept, it works, but it makes me nervous. I prefer carbon steel or cast iron with proper seasoning and maintenance.”

Customer Review: “This is a great product! I enjoy stir-fry, but my new home has a radiant electric stove that doesn’t get and stay hot like gas does. This is a great remedy for my situation. The induction element heats extremely quicky! (be careful!) It stays hot and cooks food quickly and perfectly. No more chicken boiling in soy sauce!”

Customer Review: “Good stove and wok overall, the wok doesn’t heat up as fast or retain heat as well as I had hoped. But still a solid product that I’m using daily now.”

Customer Review: “After comparing several options (ARC 200,000 BTU, Rovsun, and a couple of paella/wok sets), I went with the Concord Professional Vortex Burner and it did not disappoint. From build to burn, install to day-to-day use, this is first-class.Build & setup:The stainless-steel frame is rock-solid, with clean welds and an integrated shelf that actually holds sauces and tools. The seamless burner lip keeps grease from collecting, and the adjustable feet make it easy to level on a patio. Mine arrived well-packed; assembly was straightforward. The braided hose and regulator hooked up to a standard 20-lb propane tank in minutes.Heat performance:This thing is designed for stir-fry. The four brass nozzles create a focused “vortex” flame that hugs the wok and concentrates heat exactly where you want it. Preheats fast, delivers real wok hei, and still dials down smoothly for sauces or a steady simmer. Wind bothered my old outdoor burner; the Vortex stays consistent.Everyday use:Tossing and flipping is easy because the wok sits securely in the ring. Cleanup is quick—wipe the stainless frame and the burner edge, done. It feels like a permanent part of an outdoor kitchen, not a camp stove.Why this over cheaper burners?Some models boast bigger BTU numbers, but the Vortex’s flame geometry is more efficient for Chinese stir-fry. Add the superior materials and stability, and the higher price makes sense.Tips: use a 14–16″ carbon-steel wok, a long lighter (manual ignition), open the regulator gradually, and keep good ventilation/clearance.Bottom line:The ideal outdoor stove for Chinese cooking：powerful, precise, durable, and a pleasure to use. Exactly what I hoped for.”

Customer Review: “Best purchase for stir fry we could have bought. Pleasure to use- easy to clean up. Recommend carbon steel wok only, so high temperatures won’t warp it. This unit was easy to assemble, very sturdy, and the Vortex lives up to the sales pitch from the manufacturer.”

Customer Review: “I have cooked one Chinese meal and one Thai meal using this stove and while it is not perfect it is impressive and it does the job.The construction is top-notch for the price. I’ve had others for wok cooking but this is the best built model I’ve had. It’s made of steel not cast-iron so that’s an improvement over past versions I have had.The only complaint I have about it is that the sides are not covered and so a lot of heat shoots out the side. So much heat that they should provide a longer hose so that your tank can be further away.I have taken to placing bricks on their side around the unit so that it does not damage my utensils or melt my bottles or singe my arm hairs. This is not a perfect solution because this thing consumes a lot of oxygen and the sides are where that oxygen comes from. I haven’t decided on my ultimate solution, it will take a little bit of fiddling and testing but I’m sure I can come up with something.It provides all the heat you need for proper wok cooking and is a well built and stable unit. So it gets a five from me.”

Customer Review: “This thing is amazing. Portable, easy to use, and has its own regulator. I stick it out of my outdoor table to do wok cooking, and it barely gets hot below it, and the heat output is extremely good. Can’t recommend a better outdoor portable wok station!”

Customer Review: “Man this burner is hot and just works amazing. It was very impressively made with absolutely solid construction. Everything assembled very easy and fit well. It worked right out the gate and required minimal air flow adjustment. This burner is a great value and will get tons of use as a wok burner. My first use was with a veggie basket to roast ingredients for a salsa. It came out so well that I’ll always do this in the future. Fried rice in a wok was just as easy using this burner.Height is great for frying with a deep pan, but a little low for really safe wok or disco cooking. You may need a solid log or structure to raise it up a bit. I put it on my wooden grill table and was fine. But I’m gonna pick up a thick trunk log thats maybe 20″, to raise it up during wok use.”

Customer Review: “Out of the box a great burner compared to most. Using the wok with the ring version I bought is so much more stable than the others I’ve tried like the Bass Pro fish/turkey fryer. The ring is not a perfect circle so my 11” cast iron skillet has some wiggle but you can’t tell using the wok. It gets the wok super hot in seconds so is a pleasure to use. It quickly got the cast iron skillet to 700 F using my IR thermometer before I seared off the outside of the Christmas rib roast.Using it on the ground is annoying and on a table means I have to clean up any food and oil splatters that happen. I pulled the plastic feet out of the bottom of the legs and inserted 36” x 3/4” cast iron pipe legs with capped feet. The ring is now 38” off the ground, a good height for me as I’m pretty tall. I drilled holes in the burner legs for a sheet metal screw each and holes in the pipes to match. I can pick it all up and move it easily and the propane tank can sit underneath as you can see in the picture. I cook with it out in the yard so only have to clean the wok.Next are some small folding shelves and some way to hold the wok lid for easy access.”

Customer Review: “Wow, just Wow !! This is the biggest upgrade in Chinese cooking with electricity in my experience.WOK HEI (the breath of the Wok) easily achieved. Veggies quickly charred w/o ‘mushing’ them up with that special flavor of char.Season the Wok pan properly and it acts as a stick-free surface making it magically easy to turn foods to expose all to the heat at the base. I have yet to try the full 575 degrees, but have no doubt it can. Heat is very rapid, easy to change temps on the fly. Even deep fat frying, the oil quickly recovers when food is added.NOW, I had a little manufacturing issue with the original pan and even though I could still use the Wok I reached out to Nuwave. Holy Smokes, I was blessed to reach Perla.s as my contact!! She stayed on top of my concern and guided me through steps to confirm the situation (via pics/vid) and came right back with….”we will gladly replace the entire unit”….and the new one was here in three days! I have owned Nuwave PICs for 10+ years and have always been satisfied with them, but this was waay ‘over the top’ excellent customer service and product support. Thanks Perla.s”

Customer Review: “I have Wanted/Needed a wok ever since I was little and had Chinese Stir-fry for the first time and then learned how it was prepared… Induction cooking was invented by Frigidaire in 1933 and the first induction cooktop was made by Westinghouse in 1971, Kenmore made a number of stoves in the mid 80’s and there were a also several companies making European models up until more recently, and then NuWave brought it to the masses with portable units in 1993.This wonder-wok heats so very quickly and I love the wide range of temp control. Seasoning the pan was a breeze, and cleanup is super easy (You TOTALLY need a classic bamboo wok brush). My stove is an under-sized almost RV stove after they remodeled everyone’s apartments, so I appreciate the idea to put a pan under the wok.. The fellow did it for other reasons, but it does indeed add stability I’ve steamed with it, made stir-fry, and fried tempura with it now. I’ve never had anything heat the oil so fast, let alone be totally stable with temps.. Oh!!! and It’s amazing how fast it stops cooking when you press pause or turn it off.. Thank You Nikola Tesla for all your wonderful inventions that have given us all so very much.. Right down to this amazing wok.. This thing took a bit of getting used to since I’ve never used induction before, but I swear by it now. I love the fact it uses a NORMAL pan instead of specialty cookware like the old days when induction was new, and the cookware was truly cost prohibitive.Thank You NuWave!!! I LOVIT!!Namaste…”

Customer Review: “Wonderful induction wok stove! I have a total of 5 other flat induction cooktops and use flat bottom woks to do stir fry. I use to stir fry outdoors with a 100k btu gas wok burner but that got too tiresome and I retreated indoors. The flat induction cooktops are great and I like the set temperature and timer options, but I really missed the power of the outdoor wok burner and the round bottom wok. Surprisingly, all the cooktops are 1800 watts, but this induction wok stove is the hottest and fastest of them all.I also have an assortment of woks from all the years of cooking, but for the round induction, you really need to match the curve of this particular stove to get the best results. The best (and cheapest) on Amazon is the 14 inch wok by Winco:’https://www.amazon.com/Winco-WOK-36-Chinese-Integral-16-Inch/dp/B004HGBYTY/ref=slsr_d_dpds_fsdp4star_fa_xcat_dpriceptco_d_sccl_3_18/143-8655894-7282022?pd_rd_w=Xw3h1&content-id=amzn1.sym.d2fb3849-8a02-4230-a197-db54fe9f33a9&pf_rd_p=d2fb3849-8a02-4230-a197-db54fe9f33a9&pf_rd_r=P0J67BM5V2HPYGBQ34JJ&pd_rd_wg=tV6rQ&pd_rd_r=7bf25667-4275-4543-8279-9ef3ce6ce3aa&pd_rd_i=B004HGHJ8Y&th=1’Of course you have to know how to season it (google it on youtube) and better do it outdoors because it will stink.Note: If you are close to a Costco Business Center (California for sure) you can buy a pro wok that fits perfectly for $13. Regular Costco doesn’t carry it.”

Customer Review: “I’ve kept my wok and a flat bottomed wok in my pantry for years. My wok wouldn’t work on an electric cooktop so I bought a flat bottomed wok but it didn’t really work, either. It didn’t get hot enough and what I cooked would be soggy. It would drive water out of vegetables and they would sort of stew. Not appetizing and I didn’t enjoy the experience or the food like I did when I had a gas stove. I could turn the heat all the way up and the flat-bottomed wok would get hot but It was too heavy and awkward to lift the pan to control the heat and there was no cool zone with the large flat HOT bottom. I saw this on Amazon. My wok works again. This gets my wok hot enough. I just need to get my rhythm back so I can tend the wok and prepare ingredients at overlapping times. That’s when it’s fun.”

Customer Review: “Great purchase. Highly recommend. I use this every day for nearly all my cooking. High power with an unusually lightweight base, with a nice Wok pan. Cleaning is super easy for me. I just have it boil water in the Wok pan to clean. Heats up super fast. I learned quickly to have all the ingredients ready to cook. Turning the base unit off instantly slows cooking, just as turning it back on quickly heats it.”

Customer Review: “Noticed on 1st Use : donut-shaped cooking area (cold spot in the middle); fast; easy to use and clean.If the technical details were more complete I’d give it five stars so farSo far I’m happy enough with the product. I do wish technical details were more available, and the instructions were more complete.I bought the wok burner as a set with the black carbon-steel wok. The wok is factory prepared to be non-stick with an Iron nitride process. That technical specification is important and was hard to find. The wok is not coated in shipping oil like many carbon-steel woks, so should be cleaned gently, and does not need to be blued and seasoned before first use. There are no instructions about that, so I had to research. A comparable product with more complete care instructions is Nitro Carbon Steel (KitchenAid pans).All that seems to be important and should be spelled out in the care and use information. It’s also a great pairing … this black carbon steel seems most compatible with an induction burner wok — light wok-like cooking with less heat and energy.I’m hoping the next generation of these consumer models of induction wok burners can eliminate the donut hole cold spot at the center bottom of the pan, and provide a larger cooking area up the sides of the wok.I think this will be a good downsize for my two-person household as our existing stove is a very large commercial gas oven / range. I believe this induction wok will use less energy, clean up easier, and cook just as fast with less emissions.I am worried about the small hot area and the cold spot giving me trouble.”