Stir frying is a very easy cooking method, which involves a fast saut over a high heat and then a short steam in a sauce. With this Asian technique, you can combine meat, poultry or fish with vegetables and a sauce for a very tasty meal and one of the best things about stir frying is that it is so fast.
Ingredients keep their full flavors and have a great texture when you cook them quickly over a high heat. You just need a good stir fry recipe and a wok to get started.
Handy Tips for Delicious Stir Fries
Make sure all your ingredients are prepared before you start cooking because you will not have time to prepare anything after you have begun. Your ingredients need to be in bite sized pieces. Try to keep them all the same size so they cook at the same rate.
Stir fry the densest ingredients first because these take longer to soften. Broccoli takes longer to cook than bean sprouts, for examples, so either cut that up much smaller or finer or start cooking it before the less dense ingredients.
How to Stir Fry - Some Simple Steps
The best pan to use for stir frying is a wok. These have high, sloping sides, allowing you to move the vegetables around. If your wok is not a non stick model, you should preheat it for a minute or two over a hot flame before adding the oil. If you do not have a wok, you can make do with a skillet.
When stir frying, use a medium high temperature to begin with, and turn it up or down, as you need to. Add some aromatic herbs or spices like ginger and garlic to the hot oil and stir fry it until it is fragrant, before adding your meat.
If you are using meat, such as boneless chicken to make a
chicken stir fry, you should cook it first and then take it out of the wok before you cook the vegetables. Cook the chicken on a high heat to seal in the flavors and do not cook more than a handful at a time. When the meat changes color, it is eighty percent cooked, so this is when you take it out of the pan and cook the vegetables. Return the meat or chicken to the pan when the vegetables are almost done.
How to Add the Sauce
When it is time to add your sauce, push all the ingredients up the wok sides and pour it into the middle, then stir it to thicken it, before combining all the ingredients.
There are lots of different recipes for dishes like chicken stir fry, and you can create your own too, by using a recipe search engine to find a chicken stir fry recipe and altering some of the ingredients or by combining some boneless chicken with your favorite vegetables and any sauce you like.
More Information:
Rich and creamy
chicken stroganoff or our easy chicken and broccoli fettucine alfredo recipe.
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