Stir Fry, Manni-Style
Serves 4
This stir-fry recipe is an amalgam of things I've learned from many places: my sister-in-law from Hong Kong, Cooks's Illustrated, cooking shows, etc.
Recommended Tools
- spring-loaded tongs
- a bowl for each ingredient, plus one extra for the done meat, if using meat
- a skillet; see note below
Note on skillets and stir-fries
All the cooking shows I see show people using skillets for stir-fries instead of woks. Even my sister-in-law from Hong Kong uses a skillet! Why? Because to get a nice sear onto what you are stir-frying, a skillet's larger surface area, combined with a stovetop's lower heat, give better results. Non-stick skillets actually work really well for this recipe, but it seems that health concerns about non-stick keep surfacing, so I've written this recipe on the assumption you are using a regular skillet.
Ingredients
- (optional) 12 ounces of some sort of meat, cut into 1/8-inch-thick slices, each of which is about 2 inches long and an inch wide. Tip: put the meat into the freezer about 20 -- 30 minutes so it will firm up and be easy to slice thin. Whether you use flank steak (the recommended red meat) or chicken thighs (thighs taste more chickeny than breasts), definitely cut against the grain to improve tenderness.
- (optional) brick of fried tofu (like the kind you can find at the Japanese grocery in the Porter Exchange building) cut into bite-size pieces
- 1 large cooking onion, cut into bite-size pieces (about the same size as your pieces of meat)
- 12 ounces of some sort of veggie, like green beans, or any of the following cut into bite-size pieces: bok choy, bell peppers, broccoli. (For bok choi, cut leaves off and shred; cut thick withe parts on the bias into bite-size pieces)
- 2 tablespoons some high-heat oil, like peanut or canola --- just keep the whole bottle handy (Whole Foods actually sells super-refined canola, which can take really high heat without smoking)
- a splash or so of soy sauce (just keep the bottle handy). Check the ingredient list of your soy sauces before buying. Try to find one with only ingredients you recognise, like soy, wheat, water. Try to get one that has been naturally brewed. Good quality soy-sauce really is quite nice!
- a splash or so of dry sherry (just keep the bottle handy). Don't go quality here; just get something inexpensive that you don't mind cooking with.
- 3 medium garlic cloves, minced, or pressed through a garlic press (garlic press is great time-saver)
- 1 tablespoon minced fresh ginger (or, if you are lazy like me, grate the ginger)
Preparation - Outline
- Cut the meat first, if using; toss meat in a bowl with a bit of soy sauce; let's say 2 tablespoons or so; let sit while you are cutting other ingredients
- Prep/measure all other ingredients into their own bowls (garlic and ginger can occupy their own bowl)
- Start heating your skillet on medium-high heat, with about 2 tablespoons of oil
- When the skillet is hot enough, (the oil will start to shimmer), add onions. Stir occasionally, to give each of the onion bits a turn on the bottom. A little browning is good here. Cook until translucent and return the onions to their bowl.
- Add a bit of oil, if needed
- Put in some of the meat, a piece at a time. Leave room around each piece. If things start to smoke a bit, reduce heat. You want to get some browning on the meat; the best way is to turn it only once. I know it's called stir-fry, but don't stir the meat. When done, put meat in a clean bowl, and start the next batch of meat. Repeat until all the meat is cooked an in its bowl.
- By now, there's probably some fond on the bottom of your pan. Fond = burnt on bits of food = flavour! Throw in your veggies and a bit more oil, if needed.
- If the bottom of the pan is not smoking yet, use this opportunity to get some browning into the veggies.
- But, eventually, the fond will start to smoke or get too dark. When that happens, splash in some of the sherry and some of the soy suace. There should be a nice hissing sound, and some steam. This is good.
- With your tongs, grab one of the veggies that's stewing in the liquid, and use it like a sponge to scrape all the fond off the bottom of the skillet; the liquids you introduced will have already started dissolving the fond; you are just helping things along.
- Taste the veggies every minute or so. Ideally, you want them cooked on the outside, but still cruncy on the inside. Broccoli or green beans will become a nice, bright green.
- Taste the sauce in the pan as you go. Chances are, the liquid will cook down and become too salty; splash in some water or low-sodium chicken stock or low-sodium veggie broth. You want to make enough sauce to go with your rice. Also, if you don't taste enough salt, add more soy-sauce; if you don't taste enough sweet, add more sherry.
- When the veggies are almost done, throw in the garlic and ginger, and cook for about a minute.
- Add the meat and the onions back in the pan, and stir everything together until just hot.
- Remove from heat, and serve with rice.
Preparation - Notes/Details
The numbers below match with the numbers above.
- Letting the meat sit for a bit in some soy sauce will assist with browning. Letting it sit in oyster sauce is another nice option.
- We use separate bowls for all the ingredients because they get added at different times.
- I usually don't measure the oil, I just pour a ring around the pan, then swirl 'til the bottom is covered in oil.
- Although stir-fries emphasize crunchy veggies, I make an exception for onions: I do them 'til they are soft and translucent. Onions, like garlic, release compounds that are sweeter than sugar when cooked; so translucent onions are the way to go here.
- Some of the oil will end up with the onions instead of in the pan, so that's why we refresh here if need be.
- Using the fried tofu? Skip through the recipe until you get to the part where you add the veggies. But, if you are using the meat: If you put in all the meat at once, it will be cold enough that it will lower the temperature of the pan, and you will no longer be sauteeing the meat, but poaching it. So, doing it in batches, and leaving space between the meat, lets it brown.
- Fond: Who knew there was a name for that cooked-on stuff?
- Ideally, the veggies would be able to brown too (the browning is caramelisation, which produces flavour) but I've found that often the fond is crying out to be deglazed at this point.
- no note
- This step starts building a pan sauce with the fond as a base. Naturally, there's a word for this process: deglazing.
- When doing this for myself, I leave my veggies quite crunchy; follow your preference!
- Tasting as you go is one of the best things about cooking, so take advantage and tweak things as you go along. (With baking, on the other hand, you just have to hope everything's going according to plan...)
- Using the fried tofu? Put it in here, at the end, enough to heat it through and for it to take on some of the flavours in the pan, without crumbling. Also, at this step, the garlic and ginger go in last because they can overcook easily. I suppose another option is to throw it in with the veggies, wait a minute, then pour in the liquids to keep the garlic and ginger from overcooking.
- no note
- no note
Other Notes/Thoughts
If using bok choy, put the white bits in as you would for any other veggie, but put the green, shredded leaves in at the end, just before serving, to just wilt the leaves.
One thing that I don't like about this method is that the fond starts to smoke before the veggies are done. I think I will try this recipe by doing the onions, then the veggies, then the meat last, and then deglaze the pan and start building the sauce once I've added everything back into the pan. It would give me an opportunity to get some caramelisation into the veggies...
An even simpler variation on this recipe is to use oyster sauce instead of the soy sauce and sherry. Oyster sauce is wonderful stuff.
If you're feeling energetic, on the other hand, once everything has been added back into the pan at the end, stir a bit of corn starch into some water, and stir that into the stir-fry; the heat will thicken your pan sauce nicely
If you like heat, put in some red pepper flakes at the same time as the garlic and ginger.