For some reason, whenever I get home from a trip or don't feel well, I suddenly turn into an old Vietnamese lady and drink boiling hot water or eat food laden with ginger. I got home from Chicago early this morning after (I calculated this) 30 hours of awake time with a total of maybe 3 hours of nap interspersed in there. I came home and zonked out for 5 hours. Woke up famished and looking for some old lady comfort.
Enter stir fry. Thing about stir fry is that it can either be really delicious, or a mess. And it only takes knowing the basic stir fry formula to get it right. It doesn't have to be done in a wok. Someone asked me that recently and I thought: why would you buy a pan for just 1 application? What is it about a wok that does it right? A wok has surface area. A good surface area to heat ratio. Problem is, in American kitchens, we have flat cook tops. We don't have the appropriate hole with fire under it type cook top that many Chinese restaurants have to effectively use a wok. So then you just have a giant wobbly pan on a flat surface. Dumb. Get a giant frying pan. Lots of surface area to heat. It's not about volume. If you do it right, you should be doing it in batches anyway, not piling everything in and then hoping for the best. You end up with meat that looks unappetizing, simulateously soggy and burned vegetables, and throwing hot sauce on top to drown out the mess. Don't do that. It's gross.
Here's the key: HEAT. High Heat.
Here's the formula:
high heat + oil + aromatic (ginger, garlic) + vegetables
**Remove the vegetables and set aside**
High heat + oil + protein (silk the meat for the Chinese take out texture) - cook until meat is done
**add the vegetables back in**
Stir it so that the flavors meld
**add a finishing sauce (I run to oyster sauce for this)**
For this, I used:
- Beef trip tip steak, sliced and marinated in 2 tbps of soy sauce and 1/2 tsp of baking soda (this is silking)
- chopped up bok choy
- about a half inch of ginger root, grated or chopped
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced
- soy sauce
- sliced onions
- sesame oil
- 1 tbsp oyster sauce
- s+p
- veg oil
1. Giant frying pan, add about 1-2 tbsp of oil and let it heat til it shimmers. Add ginger and garlic and stir around for 30 seconds.
2. Add bok choy and a small amount of sesame oil. Stir it around and cover for about a minute so that it can wilt down a bit.
3. Remove bok choy from the heat and set aside. Add fresh oil and stir fry the beef. Add the onions. Cook until beef is to desired done-ness.
4. Add the bok choy back in and stir it around. I added a little more soy sauce at this b point and the oyster sauce. Killed the heat, stirred it around. You can add any further salt, if needed, here. Add black pepper.
I salt at the end because of the soy and oyster sauce; it's really easy to over-do the salt if you're not careful.
If you stir fry this way, you end up with vegetables that are cooked appropriately and meat that is browned and looks appetizing. It turns into a vibrant, delightful dish rather than just a giant pile of soggy suck.
