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Stir-Fry Recipes and Tips

Take a wok on the wild side with Diana Kuan's recipes and tips for stir-fry success—plus, a guide to ingredients and equipment

Stir Fry How-to Image
Stir-Fried Sesame Baby Bok Choy; Sweet and Sour Pork

Stir-Fry Techniques and Tips

When you stir-fry, much of the work takes place before you even fire up a burner. And this is where knife skills come into play. Because stir-frying is such a fast cooking method, it's important that the food items be relatively similar in size so they'll cook at the same rate. For example, if you're making a chicken, bell pepper, and onion stir-fry, the ingredients should be sliced into similarly sized strips or cubes. Kuan also notes that uniformly shaped ingredients make a stir-fry much easier to eat, as you're not left to wrangle stray strips of bell pepper and larger cubes of chicken into a single bite.

Prepping your ingredients—from your protein to your sauce—is essential to the stir-frying process. Because the food cooks so quickly, there's no time to stop mid-stir-fry to slice shallots or search for oil. Each component should be sliced, diced, or whisked (this includes your sauce as well as a slurry if you're using one) and set aside in its own dish near the stove well before the first splash of oil hits the pan.

The order in which you add ingredients to the pan is also important, as some items (no matter their uniform size) will cook faster than others, which means you'll have to pluck them from the pan and add them back toward the end to avoid overcooking.

With your ingredients prepped, you're ready to start stir-frying, but there are two key essentials to keep in mind—the heat of the pan and the degree to which you stir the ingredients. It's critical that you allow the pan to heat up before adding the oil and that you constantly move the items around in the pan so that they don't burn. When in doubt, stir, stir, stir.

The stir-frying process will happen pretty quickly—it usually takes 5 to 10 minutes—so it's best to have a strategy and take it step by step. Here's a chronological breakdown of the process, taking you from raw ingredients to finished dish:

• Prepare all of your ingredients and arrange them near the stove.
• Place the wok or skillet over moderately high heat, and let it heat up for 1 to 2 minutes.
• Add 1 to 2 tablespoons of your preferred oil to the pan.
• Add the protein, turning it over in the pan so that it sears on all sides. Once it's fully cooked, transfer to a plate and keep it nearby.
• If the pan looks dry, add more oil. Otherwise, add the aromatics and stir them vigorously with your spatula or spoon for 20 to 30 seconds if they're minced and 40 seconds to 1 minute if the pieces are larger.
• Add the vegetables and cook them, stirring vigorously, until they're tender.
• Add the reserved protein back to the pan with the sauce, and cook, stirring vigorously, until the sauce thickens to your desired consistency. (Optional: Add the slurry to the pan and cook until the sauce thickens.)
• Transfer the stir-fry to a plate or bowl and enjoy it with your choice of rice or noodles.

Photos: Diana Kuan

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