I love to stir fry. If sauté is soccer, then stir fry is rugby or football. It’s a little tougher sport. You’ve got to be a bit stronger to play it. Stir frying properly requires a WOK. Depending on what type of stove you have, some woks may not be useful to you. The best woks operate on large gas burners; they aren’t suitable for electric stoves since they have round bottoms. If you have an electric stove then you will need a wok with a flat bottom.
Stir frying requires full heat throughout the entire cooking time because you’re cooking a larger amount of a wide variety of foods (meat, fish, or vegetables) at once. To stir fry successfully, you must do all of your knife work first. You must cut and prepare all of the ingredients beforehand, and have them beside the stove, ready to cook. This is crucial, because the wok and stir frying is fast paced and no nonsense. The WOK doesn’t wait for you. So, crank up your wok to full heat. Let it get smoking hot and then add your oil – a lot more than you use when sautéing. Let the oil smoke before you add your first ingredient; maybe it’s beef, or chicken, or pork, or maybe it’s a firmer vegetable like butternut squash. The rule is to first add the items that take the longest to cook. Spinach cooks in 10 seconds in a wok so it and vegetables like it are always last to join the party. So, you started with beef, then add onion slices and toss and stir until they’re wilting. Then, add some carrot julienne and toss and stir until it’s starting to soften. Add red pepper slices and toss and stir (there’s a pattern here!) until wilted, then add spinach and toss and stir until wilted. Done. Pour it all onto a plate and serve it to your family with some rice or noodles.
You're into Asian Cooking, right?
WOK cooking is perhaps the absolute most thrifty and healthy style of cooking bar none – I mean it. You can crank out a healthy meal (the vegetables retain more nutrients this way) in a minute on the stove. You only use one pan (wok), so your washing time is low and you only run one burner. If you purchase a low energy rice cooker to cook and hold rice while you’re at work, then crank out a beautiful, tasty, and super healthy stir fry, your family is going to THRIVE!
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