Aromatic ingredients like garlic, ginger, green onions, chilies and spices. These ingredients are typically added to the oil first to infuse it with flavor. You won't need much; a few teaspoons to a tablespoon of total aromatic ingredients per person adds a serious amount of flavor.
The key to making a really good stir-fry is using a very high cooking temperature so the food will cook quickly. Since stir-frying involves high heat, it's important to choose an oil that has a high smoke point. If you don't, the oil will burn and the whole dish will be ruined.
Blanching means the broccoli is briefly cooked in hot water and then immediately removed and placed into an ice bath to stop the cooking process. This pre-cook method helps preserve the bright green color and it also allows the broccoli to cook faster, which keeps the broccoli crunchy.
Stir-fry onions first, then add hard vegetables such as carrot and broccoli. Quick-cooking vegetables, such as snow peas, leafy greens and bean sprouts, should be added towards the end of cooking. If using vegies that have a combination of both textures, such as gai laan, add the stems first and the leaves later.
Soy sauce, sesame oil, a bit of vinegar, or store-bought stir-fry sauces are easy to add to the dish and most stir-fry recipes will include a suggested mixture of liquid. If you don't really have a sauce planned, a bit of bottled soy sauce and some diced garlic or ginger will make a nice basic stir-fry sauce.
A great stir-fry typically consists of four important components: protein, vegetables, aromatics, and sauce. Standard stir-fry starts with one pound of protein and two pounds of vegetables, and a basic stir-fry sauce (recipe below). You can add aromatics or herbs to change the flavor profile of your dish.
Baking soda is a powerful tenderizer, but if too much is added, it can add an off-taste to the beef, which is why it is rinsed off.
What are those crunchy things in your stir-fry? They're water chestnuts, and they're surprisingly good for you! You probably already know a few things about water chestnuts. They're white and crunchy, and you'll find them in a ton of Asian-style stir fry dishes.
Boiling leaches out the vegetable's water-soluble vitamins in these vegetables, such as vitamin C and folate, as well as many of the glucosinolate compounds, which are water-soluble, too.
You don't have to boil broccoli before stir frying it. If you boil your broccoli first, you will likely end up with over cooked broccoli. When it's stir fried, broccoli is not cooked until it's soft and mushy. Instead, stir fry it just until it is tender crisp.
Steer clear of olive oil, delicate finishing oils (like nut oils), or butter, which will all burn, smoke, and become rancid quickly. This one goes hand-in-hand with the previous mistake. For perfectly cooked meat, tofu, tempeh, and/or vegetables, you want to make sure that the pan is not crowded.
Most cuisines have some version of a “holy trinity,” a combination of recurring base ingredients that form the foundation for many dishes. In Chinese cuisine, these ingredients include fresh ginger, fresh garlic, and spring onions (scallions), with the occasional addition of chiles.
Meat first, then vegetables – If you want meat or seafood in your stir fry, cook it first then scoop it out onto a separate plate before cooking the vegetables. You'll add the meat back in at the end. 5. Don't crowd the pan – If you have too much in your pan, the vegetables will steam instead of staying crisp.
The best oils for stir frys are the oils with the higher smoke points. These tend to be the “thinner” oils such as peanut, grapeseed or canola.
Use olive oil to stir-fry or sear a steak.
Though it's nice to have two oils (one for cooking, such as canola oil, and one for finishing, such as extra-virgin olive oil), here's a secret: We use extra-virgin olive oil for high-heat applications, too. And it's completely fine.
All foods give off some steam when cooking, so it's important to leave the lid off the pan during frying so the steam evaporates rather than collecting on the lid and dripping back into the hot oil.