Stir-frying: how to really do it right
Not in the mood to spend hours in the kitchen? Just grab that wok, because you can throw together a stir-fry dish in no time. Meat or fish, vegetables, sauce, rice (or noodles), and your dish is ready. But how do you really do it right?
Of course, you can throw everything into one pan, wait until it’s cooked and hope it tastes good. But anyone who trains their wok skills a little will soon be rewarded with magically delicious dishes.
Step 1: be prepared
Heat the wok on the stove before you start preparing your dish. Make sure all your ingredients are already at room temperature and chopped—in other words: ready to be cooked. You stir-fry the dish over high heat, so you won’t have time to chop anything anymore. Besides, cold vegetables in a not-hot-enough pan will make everything soggy.
Step 2: swirl
Is the wok hot? Spread the oil around the entire wok in a swirling circle. This also coats the sides of the wok with oil.
Step 3: fry the meat
Make sure your meat is already out of the refrigerator and at room temperature, and use high heat to sear it. This keeps most of the juices in the meat and makes it deliciously tender. Is your meat almost cooked? Remove it from the wok and add it back to the pan later with the rest of the ingredients. This reheats the meat while keeping it tender.
Step 4: stir-fry the vegetables
Don’t add all your ingredients to the wok at once, but in smaller batches. Too much at once will cause the wok to cool down. That way, your dish won’t develop the delicious stir-fried flavor known as “wok hay” in China. We said it before: make sure all your ingredients are at room temperature; that also prevents a lot of trouble.
Step 5: fry the rice
When making fried rice, make sure you use a spatula to keep scraping the bottom loose. This prevents rice from sticking and burning on the bottom.
Step 7: sauce
Do you notice while stir-frying that the sauce is burning along the sides? Use your spatula or tilt the wok so the liquid sauce reaches the sides of the wok. If there isn’t enough sauce for this, add some wine, water or stock.
Be a little kind to that wok too, here’s how to maintain it. Love Chinese cuisine? Here you can read about everything you need to cook Chinese food. Need some extra wok tips? Then read this article.
