Yes. It’s brilliant for steaming the bits.
Hard veggies especially, like carrots and broccoli.
If you’re only cooking for yourself, cook only what you’re going to eat at that sitting. Reheated stir fry is pretty bad.
If you can’t get fresh ginger, go without. Trust me on this.
Steamed newbie bits? Now them’s good eatin’.
What’s the deal with the heat? Do you mean the high setting? Why does it have to be so hot?
Using an electric range, I set the heat to between 8-9, high gets out of my control too quickly. Be prepared to pick up the pan off the heat, especially when you are browning the garlic and ginger. Don’t burn the garlic!!! If you do, start over with a clean pan.
Sigh. I wish I had a gas stove.
Oh - it has to be that hot to sear the veggies to crisp-tender. That’s what stirfry is all about. Steaming can make things mushy.
One comment to add: if you can’t get/don’t want to waste fresh ginger, get dried. Word is, the best ginger root is dried, and it should store forever. China #1, or something like that. Check at online spice stores.
The reason why Chinese cooks use cornstarch-based marinades is because the cornstarch, if used correctly, helps make something of a protective barrier for the meat, sealing in juices and keeping it tender. I can’t imagine making a stir-fry without it as it would result in meats that are way too tough. In fact, this is really more important if you want a good stir-fry than using cornstarch to thicken your sauces. Usually, the cornstarch in the meat marinade will thicken your sauces a little bit; my grandmother never put cornstarch in her sauces and the food was excellent.
High heats are very important for stir-fries! The high heat allows the ingredients to cook quickly so they aren’t sitting in oil and becoming too greasy. Thus, it’s important that you pick an oil that has a high smoking point. Vegetable oils are usually fine; never use olive oil. I had a friend who used to make fried rice with olive oil, which never really turned out very well until I suggested canola.
One thing I do when I really am in the mood is do a preliminary stir-fry of the marinated meat just until barely cooked and then drain the meat on paper towels; then I cook the vegetables, the sauce, etc. and put in the meat at the last minute. This helps get rid of even more of the grease. Greasy stir-fries are never pleasant.
Hope that helps a little!
You can’t stir fry on an electric stove. Don’t even try, it’s not going to work. You can make what is a reasonable approximation of a stirfry but using a totally different method.
As a gross generalisation, two important variables affecting how your food cooks is the heat and responsiveness of your pan. Wok cooking is charecterised by having both high heat AND high responsivity.
Heat is NOT the same thing as temperature, heat is the rate that energy is moving into your pan. One way to achieve high heat is to have a pan with a high thermal mass and to pre-heat it. However, a high thermal mass also means you get low responsivity. The other method of achieving both high heat and high responsivity is by having a high output burner and a very low thermal mass pan and this is what wok cooking is all about. Since you do not have a high output burner, you cannot stir fry. However, if you are willing to sacrifice high responsivity, you can make a fairly decent pseudo stir fry*.
The first thing you have to realise is that a classic wok just doesn’t work. What you wan’t is a flat bottomed, cast iron wok shaped pan, well seasoned and non-enamelled as you’re going to be cranking it pretty high. You’re cooking for one only which is good because theres only so much thermal mass a pan can store. First put the pan on the heat and just let it crank for a good 5 minutes dry. Contrary to the standard stir fry procedure, you want to get the sucker really full of heat to start off with. Next, add in some peanut or canola oil, give it one swirl an then immediately add in the meat (If you had any sugar or cornstarch in the marinade, you’ve now got a black mess on the bottom of your pan). If you ever see any liquid pool on the bottom of the pan, you know you’ve failed and next time, preheat the pan hotter and use less meat. By the time the meat has finished cooking, you’ve about sucked out all the thermal load from the pan so you need to start over. Deglaze the pan with a bit of clean water, scrape off all the residue and pour it in with the meat. Then, clean the pan and put it back on the burner. Note, this is also different from the classic stir fry method.
Crank the pan back up until it’s smoking hot again and repeat the same procedure for the vegetables. What you want is “wok hei” which is the combination of slight charring and crunch you can only get from really intense heat. If you’re anal, you can do them in individual batches according to cooking time so that all the vegtables are cooked with wok hei and to the right doneness. If you’re slightly less anal, add the longest cooking vegtables first and then stagger them according to cooking time but realise that most of the vegtables are going to be sauteeing rather than stir frying and will not have wok hei. Finally, at the last minute, stir some cornstarch into the meat + water mix you have on the side and add back into the pan for one last toss to form the sauce. What you have is the best approximation to a stir fry you can get on an electric stove.
edit: Also, more vegtables does not always make for a better stir fry. Most classic stirfrys are just 1 meat and 1 or 2 vegtables like beef & broccoli or chicken & cashew. The kitchen sink approach is very american but not very authentic.
- If you wan’t a good analogy, a classic stirfry is a high flying investment banker who goes on massive spending sprees but is living very close to the edge with only minimal savings in the bank. Your electric stir fry is a middle class miser who carefully saves up his income over a long period of time and then goes hog wild until his bank account runs dry. Because the miser is earning less money, he can’t go on a perpetual bender like the investment banker but he can have almost just as much fun if he’s willing to be patient enough.
Don’t bother nuking it. It’s actually easier to peel and mince if it’s frozen.
Me too, but I think newbies are better roasted.
Wow, this is really interesting, and explains why my “stir fries” come out pretty tasty, but not through a genuine stir-fry method. Stupid electric range…I generally cook things as long as I can get away with without having the onions start to blacken, and then pop a lid on it and steam it for the last couple of minutes. It’s pretty good, but not the excellent crunchiness of the real thing.
jsgoddess, as Asknott said, ginger is sold by weight (at least it is at every grocery store I’ve been to). You can break off a tiny nubbin of ginger, about the size of a large grape, and it’ll be about right for a single strongly-gingered stir-fry, or two moderately-gingered ones. And it won’t cost more than fifty cents or so, probably a lot less.
Daniel
More like about 19 cents.
For SUPER high heat, I’ll make a charcoal fire in my grill, make a little “volcano” out of the coals, and put the wok into the concave part. Ridiculously high heat.
But, my gas stove has a “power burner” – a burner that is much hotter than the typical burner. That’s what I usually use, but even it doesn’t get the wok as hot as putting into a pile of charcoal.
Well, y’all can critique my usual stir-fry recipe. I’ve been making this for years, to much acclaim.
Before anything begins, prepare the secret sauce. The secret sauce is: 1 1/3 cups of soy sauce (NOT teriyaki sauce), 1/3 cup of corn syrup, 2 tablespoons cornstarch, and 1/2 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (or more if you like it). Mix it up in a container and set it aside while you do everything else.
First, cut up chicken breasts into one-inch cubes, at least one breast per diner. The amount of sauce above should be enough for four medium breasts. Put a touch of oil in a hot wok or frying pan and cook, stirring often, until almost done (you want white outsides, but still a little rubbery, or else it’ll get too dry later). When almost done, remove the chicken to a bowl and cover loosely with foil.
Next, the veggies. Put your veggies in the hot pan (one bag of mixed stir-fry veggies is enough, I find, for about four chicken breasts’ worth of cooking). Toss 'em around and cook until they get just a tiny bit soft. Go back to the bowl with your chicken. Odds are, by now there’s a bit of excess water in the bowl. Pour that water down the drain, then put the chicken back into the pan with the veggies. Cover the whole mess with your secret sauce. Bring to a simmer, let it simmer about 1-2 minutes, then serve over rice.
It’s a breeze, and people love it. What’s more, it’s just as good the next day.
Pondering on this wok/electric stove problem…
Lodge (where we’d all get our cast iron if we could afford it) makes a wok, and it’s described as having a big flange on the bottom, so you don’t need a ring. Maybe that would work better on an electric. Still, control would be a problem. My impression of electric stoves is the first level is almost hot, and the other three are way too hot.
I have to question the wisdom of throwing every BTU in the known universe at a wok. You want the thing to be rocket hot, but not 12,000 were instantly vaporized in Valencia by a terrorist nuke hot. You don’t want to burn your dinner, just cook it. I find that just above medium heat – slightly more than pancake temp – is plenty.
No. Ginger in a tube is ginger paste. It’s good stuff
- Ah, OK.
- Thanks.
- Hi, Dr. Nick!
Hey, you opened the door. Don’t blame me for walking through.
[quote]
First, cut up chicken breasts into one-inch cubes, at least one breast per diner./QUOTE]
Wow, that’s a lot of meat. Maybe it’s because I’m trying to be health conscious, but that sounds like a buttload of flesh. I’d go with a third of that amount. Add 1 to 2 times that volume of veggies, and you’ve got yourself a hearty meal.
And not cubes. Thin slices or matchsticks. (That goes double for red meat.) Against the grain. It looks more elegant, and the increased surface area hols more sauce.
YSFMV.
heh. Well, true. And the truth is, the chicken is so good with the sauce that I usually pick it out almost exclusively, I love it so. So, for me at least, it’s good to have extra chicken. Also, that much usually ensures leftovers, which as I mentioned are delish.