As with any kitchen essential, it's important to choose the right one.
is a spoon's primary task. It has to have a wide surface area so that you can move a significant amount of food around the pot with limited effort. It'd better also have a long, sturdy handle, with a shape that sits comfortably in your hand.is necessary to get cooking food off the bottom of the pot, and for deglazing the browned bits off the bottom of the pan when making a pan sauce or braise.as you go is a necessity.
Because wood is soft and deforms relatively easily compared to, say, metal, it's great at following the contour of the bottom of a pan, even when there are micro-aberrations in the surface. Wood is also much firmer than silicone or rubber, which means you don't miss out on scraping up even stubborn spots of browned meats or vegetables. Your stews and soups will be tastier for having been scraped and stirred with a wooden spoon.
Meanwhile, heat-resistant nylon spoons are enjoying a brief moment in the sun, but I can't understand why. They're simply too hard to work properly. Sure, maybe they won't break after 15 years, but they won't give slightly the way a wooden spoon does—you may as well be using metal. They do exactly what a wooden spoon does, only worse, and for more money. Ludicrous.