Stir Frying

Some thoughts of how to stir-fry. I really think this is such a core technique of the Chinese home cook. You’ll never achieve the high BTU of a professional kitchen stove, but there are ways to approximate the effect without using obscene amounts of oil and lighting your kitchen on fire.

The goal of a stir-fry is to extract moisture from the food as quickly as possible while also infusing the flavors of the food with spices, aromatics, and sauces, without spending too much time in the wok.

batches

It’s very important to cook in batches. The worst thing is to overcrowd your wok/pan. Honestly this is a pretty common technique even in other recipes when you need to sear meat, or do something else in a pan or wok. The simple idea is that anything you put into the wok is going to be much lower in temperature than the pan/wok. So, because physics, the wok is going to drop in temperature. If it drops too much, the wok needs to heat back up, and the food doesn’t cook at the proper temperature, or cook quickly enough for it to be considered a “stir fry”.

You can get a bigger wok, or you can heat up your wok for way longer, but this only goes so far. At some point the best way to do this is to cook in batches. By reducing the amount of food that is put into the wok each batch, you reduce the chance of overcrowding. The food also tends to cook faster, and come out tastier.

cleaning the wok

Following up on the batches, sometimes the food you stir-fry will leave residue or other gunk, because the meat may leave behind fond, or sauces leave behind burnt bits. I’d recommend cleaning the wok in between so that you can heat up the wok again without worry that the fond or leftover bits burn and become cancer fuel for your esophagus. Or I mean you could do that too, you’re an adult.

Clean the wok by running it under hot water, and scrub away the leftover bits with a sponge or wok brush. Put the wok back on the stove, heat it up, and wipe away the remaining water as it reheats. Then you’re ready for the next batch!