Asian Cooking 101: Stir Fry

Stir-fry is the art of quickly tossing and stirring together bite size morsels of food in a little oil over high heat. Stir frying simply and naturally brings out the best in food. Stir-frying is easy to master. All you need are a skillet or a wok, a long-handled spatula with wide, curved edge, and a little time. The tricky part is learning to work with higher than usual cooking heat. Both hands come into play. You use one hand to hold the pan, moving it on and off in order to control temperature, the other hand is used to stir, keeping the ingredients moving.

When you stir fry, you do not really fry; you cook foods quickly by stirring and tossing them in a small amount of hot fat. This kind of flash-cooking seals in juices and keeps flavour fresh. This technique can be used to make dishes of every kind, from appetizer to dessert. All stir-fry recipes follow the same basic steps. Once you have mastered the method, you can easily create recipes of your own.

You need to keep these points in mind;

1) First, you will need to cut up the ingredients in small, uniform pieces or thin slices. Since the food is cooked so quickly, uneven cut up food will gives uneven result, ranging from almost raw to overdone

2) Assemble the cut-up meat and/or vegetables, seasonings, sauce mixture and salad oil or any other fat within reach

3) Put the clean, dry pan over high heat. When the pan is hot, add the oil. Heat oil until it's hot enough to ripple when the pan is tilted from side to side

4) Add any seasonings like garlic or ginger. Stir and toss the seasonings until lightly browned

5) Now add meat, if used. Spread the pieces evenly over the pan's surface. Again, stir and toss until lightly browned all over. Turn meat out of pan

6) Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of oil. When the oil is hot, add vegetables, starting with the type that has the longest cooking time, like fennel, cabbage or mushrooms. For fibrous vegetables like broccoli or asparagus, you may need to add a little water and the pan for a few minutes to steam them tender

7) Return meat to pan. Mix cooking sauce and cornstarch together. Then pour into pan. Stir until sauce boils and thickens.

Serve with hot rice.