A wok is a big cooking pan with a round, deep, bowl-like shape and sloping sides, used all over Chinese cooking and now in most kitchens in Asia and beyond. Because the sides go up instead of out, the food can be pushed up the side to cool or pulled back down into the hot middle, so one pan can fry fast, boil, steam (with a rack), or deep-fry. It is almost always made of thin metal — iron or steel — so it heats very quickly, and a well-used one turns black and smooth, which cooks say makes the food taste better. In English, 'wok' means the pan, not the food and not the cooking style; if you want the style you say 'stir-fry'. It is a normal, everyday word in English now — no one thinks of it as a foreign word any more, and any supermarket will sell one. You will also meet it as a loose verb ('wok the vegetables') and, more often, in the phrase 'wok hei' — the smoky taste a very hot wok gives food — which restaurant people in English use with real respect. Note that English uses 'wok' only for the round Chinese pan; the flat pan is a frying pan or skillet, and calling that a wok sounds wrong to an English ear.