The Stir Fry

Stir fry cooking is an Asian method of putting things into a wok/pan and at the end of the cooking process - one complete dish is done! Stir fry cooking is also a quick a convenient way for triathletes (or other athlete-kind) to cook up a meal. This post is not about recipes nor will it give you any photos of the thousands of stir fries I have cooked up in my lifetime but it is more an educational piece.

Why? Because so many people are doing it wrong! That's why.

In basic Asian stir fry cooking - it comes in 3 parts/steps.

1) Add oil and your Asian aromats to hot wok/pan.

What are these aromats you speak of? They are your garlic, ginger, onions, chillies which set the tone of your dish and adds the flavour to your cooking oil.

I don't have a recommendation to the oils you use. There are many studies out there which recommend and oppose the use of different oils for cooking. I will leave this up to you. What will add here is that I never recommend the use of Olive oil in Asian stir fry cooking. Why? Olive oils and Asian cooking don't go hand in hand, Asian stir fry cooking requires oils with a high smoke point. I personally use coconut oil, rice bran and sometimes vegetable. I often add (a few drops of) sesame oils - it should never be used as the sole oil for cooking - it is only added to perk up the flavour of the oil.

Different proteins suit different aromats. From what is passed down to me from my mum...and her mum etc...

• Ginger suits white meats such as chicken, fish etc
• Garlic goes well with everything
• Chillies are good for added spice - I add it more with beef or pork
• Onions I don't use too much personally but it goes well with most proteins

2) Add your proteins to your oil and aromats...

Only after your aromats are cooked through (become transparent/smell of the aromats can be noticeable). After I add the protein to my wok/pan and stir through to evenly coat the contents, I turn down the heat so that the proteins can be cooked through. Why? You don't want to over cook your proteins on the outside whilst it is still raw on the insides. I never use frozen proteins, I always cook either fresh from the supermarket/markets or I will defrost ahead of time. Nothing worse that icy meat and excess liquids in stir fries.

If you have more than one protein in your dish, the one which requires a longer time to cook goes into the wok first etc. The time it takes for proteins to cook through also depend on how thick you have you prepared them. This is why it is important that you cut proteins as evenly as possible.

Tofu can be used as a protein and I will often cook it the same time as my vegetables as they don't need to be cooked through as they can be eaten raw. They are added to the wok to be heated only.

3) Add your vegetables.

They don't take as long to cook through as proteins. If you have a mix of vegetables - try to sort (or know) which ones takes longer to cook than others and thrown them into the wok/pan in the order of duration to cook. If it is not obvious enough, you want your dish to have its contents cooked through - the last thing you need is to have one vegetable overcooked and the others raw.

Sometimes I might blanch vegetables before I add them into a stir fry - this method allows the vegetables to cook through without losing too much of its colour and will not require too much stirring through to cook.

Always add salt to your stir fry dishes. I tend to add the salt once everything is cooked through. The other sauces or flavours you wish for your stir fries to have can also be added now. If you are having a sweet-ish dish, you still need to add the salt, (trust me) without salt, it will not work. I sometimes add fresh chopped chillies at the end of the cooking phase too.

Have you noticed that when you eat out in Asian restaurants that when the meals come out they are all shiny and often have the thick liquid/gravy on the bottom (full of flavour)? This is cornflour mixed with cold water and added to the stir fry and cooked for about 30sec prior to serving.

Well there you go - I have just given away the secret to Asian stir fry cooking. I don't have recipes as I have always been taught to cook by feel/taste.

Some excellent combinations I often make are:
- Garlic, beef and snow peas
- Ginger, prawns, Chinese cabbage
- Garlic, chilly, pork, honey and soy sauce (childhood favorite as the honey and soy sauce caramelises the pork)
- Ginger, chicken, tofu, bok choy*
- Garlic, white fish, capsicum with sweet and sour sauce (my family recipe of tomato sauce and pineapple juice) - this can also be sweet and sour pork if you replace fish with pork.
-  Garlic, ginger, tofu & bean sprouts

Crab I cooked once - served with boiled eggs

*with vegetables such as bok choy, always cut/separate the stems with from the leaves as they cook at different rates - stems go in the wok prior to leaves.

These are only a few that I can think of off the top of my head...I have cooked so many stir fries in my life that I don't particularly have a specialty.

Hope this helps people with their stir fry adventures. There is more to stir fries than just throwing everything into a wok and stir through. Do you have a dish you want me to personally make and post? Let me know, I have cooked most stir fry dishes in the past.

Happy Stir-Fry!