I enjoy making stir fry. It is easy, fast, well balanced, and delicious. I usually use a stir fry sauce from a jar, though, because all my attempts at concocting something myself turn out mediocre at best.
What I would REALLY like to do is keep about a handful of staple ingredients around the house that would allow me to create a multitude of different sauces by using different combinations of the base ingredients. Like soy, ginger, orange juice, stock, seasame oil, rice vinegar - that kind of thing.
I do this all the time. I never buy “sauce” for stir fries, I just use what’s in the pantry.
Here’s the basic stuff that I might use:
Soy Sauce
Sesame Oil
Rice Wine Vinegar
Chinese Black Vinegar
Various other “normal” vinegars (red wine, white wine, cidar, white, etc)
Fish Sauce
Sriracha sauce
Fresh Garlic
Fresh Ginger
Orange juice
Lime/Lemon juice (fresh squeezed)
Orange/lime/lemon zest
Chinese 5-spice mix
White Wine
Chicken stock
Sherry
sugar - both white and brown
hoisin sauce, oyster sauce, etc. I don’t use these much, but have been known to throw some in
I just mix things up in various combos depending on what I want. For example, say I want a citrusy sauce. I might use 1/4 cup chicken stock, 1/4 cup sherry or white wine, some orange juice, orange zest, a couple tablespoons soy sauce and fresh ginger to taste.
Hot & Sour sauce: vinegar, sriracha sauce, soy sauce, maybe some fresh chilis if I have some, and sugar
Ginger sauce: a whole pile of fresh grated ginger, soy sauce, white wine or sherry, maybe some chicken stock
etc. etc. I don’t really keep recipes, I just experiment until the sauce tastes good!
Do y’all usually put a thickener in the sauce? I don’t like it super-thick and sugary like it so often is at restaurants, but I do like a bit of thickness to the sauce, and will therefor use a couple teaspoons of corn starch at the very end of the recipe.
Usually I’ll take the stuff out, after I’ve cooked it, and then reduce the sauce to the thickness i want. Then throw the cooked stuff back into the pan for a 10-30 seconds, and then pour everything over the rice.
Yup, I’m the same as you - I don’t like it goopy, but sometimes I like it thicker than what it is. A little cornstarch added to the sauce itself goes a long way. Sorry, I forgot to mention that in my first post.
My usual sauce is very basic and easy, and goes well with chicken or shrimp (or just veggies).
1 and 1/3 cups soy sauce
1/3 cup corn syrup
2 tablespoons cornstarch
1/4 teaspoon ground red (cayenne) pepper, or more if you like it (I like it, so I put in more)
That’s all. Mix it together, pour it over your nearly-done meat and veggies, and bring to a boil to thicken. If you want to speed the process, you can microwave the sauce for a minute while you’re cooking the other stuff, give it a little head-start. Serve over rice.
Athena’s already covered pretty much everything I was going to suggest already, so I’m just going to add a tasty combo that you can play around with if you’re inclined to try something more Thai-inspired:
lemongrass (you can get it bottled and chop up as needed)
garlic
ginger
fish sauce
thai curry paste (we usually have red on hand, and occasionally green)
coconut milk
lime juice
I don’t really have measurements for any of the above… it usually involves tossing a little bit of this and a little bit of that into the wok until it tastes good.
