Stir Frying With a Wok At Home

by Nicole Bruce

It is a common practice to stir fry your dinners at home, because they are easy, quick and fast to prepare. But how do we master this ancient art of cooking at home? Simple, let us understand the technique and from there we can grow and become the greatest stir fry chef at home. Magic happens when you put a few ingredients into a thin metal vessel over a flame. The heat triggers a chemical reaction in the amino acids and sugars, releasing what the Chinese call the wok "hei", the distinctive, often elusive, wok fragrance. It can be hard to replicate wok hei on domestic stoves because the heat is less intense than the fierce gas burners used in Chinese restaurants. Tao overcome this, you will need to crank up the heat and preheat the wok for a few minutes before you start, making sure the oil is shimmering or just to smoke before you added the ingredients.

Grape seed oil is oil of choice for some chefs, because of its neutral flavour and high smoke point, the temperature at which the oil starts to smoke. Some chefs says they would never dream of using a non-stick wok, preferring a round based cast iron or carbon steel wok, which he seasons before use. Most woks have a ring on their side, which gets hot along with the wok. Protect your hand with a clean, folded tea towel or oven mitt when you are tossing the ingredients in the wok. Many woks also come with a lid, handy for slow braising as it prevents the liquid from evaporating. But for a stir fry, you want to cook the dish quickly in a small amount of oil with the lid off so the steam escapes. After use, chefs wash their wok under hot water and clean it with a cloth wipe or sponge. Scouring a wok with a metal scrubber and liquid detergent strips off the coating, so best to avoid this. They then dry the wok over flame, removing it from the heat and rubbing on a scant teaspoon of grapeseed oil paper towel to prevent rust.

As with pizza toppings, less is more when it comes to successful stir fries. Adding the entire contents of the veggie crisper will give your dish in an indistinct, muddy flavor. There's no hard and fast rule but you don't want to turn it into chop suey every time you stir fry. Chefs suggest choosing up to five main ingredients, plus some seasoning ingredients. That might mean lean meat, shellfish or tofu, some onion or spring onion, and several vegetables, along with seasonings such as ginger, garlic, Hoisin sauce, fermented black beans or shoaxing rice wine.

Here are a few successful stir fry combinations you can try at home;
BEEF - broccoli/broccolini, ginger, or capsicum and chilli.
CALAMARI - celery, spring onions, and chilli
CHICKEN - shiitake mushroom and snow peas, fresh cloud ear mushrooms, and walnuts.
CALAMARI - celery, spring onions, and chilli
PORK - ginger and firm tomatoes, black beans, spring onions, and tobanjan (hot bean sauce) or ground Sichuan pepper.
TOFU - mushroom and bok choy, bean shoots, chili and spring onions.

About the Author

Hi, I'm Nicole Bruce I'm an article writer since I was in High School. My favorite topic is about cooking, but when Recipe for Stir Fry Sauce was become popular, all of my topic now was for stir fry recipe. Sometimes I made my own recipe of stir fry and I post it in some sites on the web. I hope that you will like my recipe.