Cooking Techniques: Stir Fry - The Taste of Asia

Stir frying — cooking small pieces of food quickly over high heat in a wok—lends itself well to a variety of ingredients and seasonings. Since the cook time is so short, it’s an extremely efficient use of fuel, one of the reasons for its origin.

Another reason for its popularity is its forgiving nature. Unlike many other styles of cooking, flubbed measurements, forgotten ingredients, or even slight overcooking rarely ruin a dish. In fact, woks practically encourage improvisational cooking.

The best tools are a large wok and a bamboo spatula for stirring. The wok lets you stir, shake, and flip foods vigorously without flinging them all over the kitchen. In a pinch, you could stir fry in a large, tall-sided, smooth-bottomed pan made to cook over high heat. Start with a small amount of oil in the wok, or use water or broth in cooking. Most recipes call for cooking the meat first, them removing it from the wok. Cook vegetables, add the cooked meat to the veggies in the wok, add seasonings and sauce.

Stir frying is especially popular in the Canton and Szechuan regions of China, as well as Vietnam.

Size matters: in stir frying, ingredients should be cut into similar sizes, so that the food will cook evenly. Some ingredients take longer to cook than others: broccoli, beef, and cauliflower will cook slower than mushrooms and onions, for example. If you’re following a recipe, cook the ingredients in the order of the recipe for best results. If you’re winging it, keep in mind denser foods generally take longer to cook, so they should be cut into thinner slices or go into the wok first.

Make sure the wok is hot before you start adding ingredients. Add the oil to the cool wok and heat it until the oil thins and runs easily.

The key to stir frying is, not surprisingly, stirring. The pros are able to shake, shimmy, and flip foods as if they were omelets, but it’s enough to just stir and turn to get the job done.

To keep beautiful, brightly colored veggies (like broccoli) from getting mushed, blanch them first: drop broccoli into vigorously boiling water and watch closely until it turns bright green. Remove from boiling water and plunge briefly into cold water. Then add it to the mixture.

When stir frying meats, look for a color change to indicate doneness: beef turns from red to brown; pork and chicken will lose their pink hue and turn white, then slightly brown. Then darker brown. Then black, which means you waited too long. (Thin slices that have turned white are cooked enough!)

Use high-heat oils, such as peanut oil (and not too much) for stir frying. Butter will burn at high heat, as will margarine.

Bamboo utensils can go into the dishwasher—a big plus. Carbon steel woks are popular, but higher maintenance than aluminum woks. If you’ve never seasoned a piece of cookware, you probably want an aluminum wok.