Because of this quick cooking, it’s best to have everything prepped and chopped and ready to go. Stir-frying proceeds at a fast pace and takes attention. Start off with your wok on medium-high heat and cook your protein until golden. This has been my go-to method for a while now, though I can't remember where I first saw it being utilized. The high heat will diminish the distinctive taste. (Round-bottom woks may work on gas burners but will not sit steadily on electric ranges.) © Copyright 2020 Meredith Corporation. Give your stir-fry sauce a stir or a shake and then pour the sauce into the hole. Stir-frying was first developed in China as a cooking method that worked efficiently on simple brick stoves. This guide to stir-frying teaches the basics of this quick and healthy cooking method. Get the Complete Stir-Fry Guide eBook for $6.99. Meats are flavorful, tender, and well seared. For instance, aluminum has a specific heat of .91. We reserve the right to delete off-topic or inflammatory comments. A few notes before you jump in and start grill-wokking: This is not the world's safest cooking method. A round-bottomed wok fit over the lipped hole, capturing the heat efficiently. This means that at a given temperature, it's got relatively little stored heat. Light up a full chimney of coals, pile them in the center, and you end up with intense heat below, moderately high heat on the sides, plenty of airflow up and around the edges, the stability of a round-bottomed wok, it really can't be beat. (If anyone knows, please inform me!). Cook one dish at a time, and let the coals pre-heat for a few minutes in between dishes. Things are hot, fast, and furious. Have you ever wondered what to do with the few stalks of celery about to go limp, or the bunch of spinach that is about to wilt? Stir-frying is a Chinese cooking technique that is done over high heat and with a small amount of oil. When you add food to the pan, it rapidly loses heat. There's nothing worse than wok-cooked vegetables that have been sitting around in a steam table until they are dull and drab. It's possible to get good-but-not-great results with a regular skillet on a home burner. It's got a removable central grate that opens up to reveal a circle in which you can nestle a real-deal, round-bottomed wok (I got a 20-incher made out of carbon steel in Chinatown for $14). A Wester skillet will drop to around 480°F, while a wok, because of its lower amount of stored heat energy, will drop all the way down to nearly 400°F. Don't waste expensive extra- virgin olive oil or dark sesame oil for stir-frying. We may earn a commission on purchases, as described in our affiliate policy. You will achieve no wok hei, no intense smoky, seared-and-crunchy flavors. Choose one that conducts heat well. No flames licking up the side of the wok. A flat-bottomed wok on a home burner is even better. In a restaurant, wok cooking is a non-stop, start-to-finish, once-it-hits-the-pan-it-stays event. Now that you know the basics to stir-frying, and you can start getting creative by coming up with your own stir-fry combos! Woks are thin, relatively lightweight vessels. We’ll explain the process of stir-frying below, but if you need a visual, we have a video that shows you how to stir-fry: Stir-frying is a great way to bring together just about any vegetable and protein combination in a fast and tasty way. The bottom of the wok gets the highest temperature, and the ingredients that call for lower heat can be pushed up the sides of the wok. The idea is that with proper preheating, a Western pan will have enough energy stored in it that even when you add food to it—a big fat steak, for example—it won't lose much temperature, allowing you to cook your food in an even, predictable manner. So a Western skillet is superior to a wok after all for cooking on a low-output burner! You can even use what’s leftover in your fridge or freezer. Once the wok has regained some energy and starts smoking again, cook the next batch, and so on. Get out the serving dish. We’ve added our favorite stir-fry sauce variations to the infographic below, so that you don’t have to be stuck with the same basic flavor profile for all of your stir-fries. A full-fledged turkey fryer burner hooked up to a propane tank will get pretty dam close to approximating the heat output of a Chinese restaurant range, though you still need to use a flat-bottomed wok. The bottom heats up super fast, so you've got half the battle done right there, but the sides done heat properly, meaning you've still got to work in relatively small batches. Take your wok off the heat before the veggies are fully done cooking. It doesn’t have to be cooked all the way, since you’ll be adding it back into the wok in the end for a final toss. Enjoy quick stir-fry meals with anything you have in your kitchen! a Western skillet is designed to heat and cool very slowly and evenly. Whether we’re trying to get dinner on the table in the shortest amount of time possible, or use up some veggies in our fridge, stir-fries are the way to go. Even better is to use real live coals. Not only must the pan be ripping hot to start, but you need to keep it above a high flame the entire time you cook with it if you want to effectively generate wok hei. It includes everything you need to know about mastering the basics of stir-frying, plus 26 stir-fry combos to get you started – all for only $6.99! this link is to an external site that may or may not meet accessibility guidelines. Let me know how that works out if you do it. That means that it takes .91 kilojoules of energy to raise 1 kilogram of aluminum by 1° Kelvin (about 2° degrees Fahrenheit for those who are imperially inclined). You pan loses less heat when food is added, maintaining a relatively high cooking temperature from start to finish. Oh, ok—wanna see one more graph? The high temperature required for stir-frying sears food quickly and preserves the natural juices. With this setup, you've got essentially what amounts to a perfect restaurant arrangement. Why, exactly, is this distinction important? Avoid pans that come with a nonstick finish, as they can't be used over high heat and the finish deters browning. An no, we're not going to building one of these at home today. wok hei is not developed in stainless steel. Our 31-day calendar of meals and tips shows you how to cook more and love it with fun, family-friendly meals that come together quickly and deliciously. Cooking Light may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website. Vegetables and proteins are tossed together in a wok, which is a round-bottomed pan, shaped like a bowl. To achieve the massive amount of heat output needed for the best stir-fries, these knee-valves control not only gas output, but oxygen as well, in order to burn faster and hotter. Shrimp, scallops, and firm-fleshed fish such as halibut work well, but delicate, flaky fish such as flounder or tilapia may fall apart. The best choice for the typical home cooktop is a rolled carbon steel or enamel-clad cast-iron wok, 14 inches across, with a flat bottom. There’s no wrong combo! What we are going to do is work our way through a few different common home methods of stir-frying to see if we can come up with the ideal way to approximate restaurant-quality dishes. The total cooking time may only be five or so minutes, which doesn't allow time to prepare ingredients midstream. You want flames rising up the sides of the wok and curling over the edge so that when you fling food up in the traditional stir-fry method, it hits a rush of hot air that helps eliminate the steam and moisture that are the bane of good stir-fried dishes. They’ll continue to cook in the wok as you finish the dish. Pull-apart tender meat and ultra-crisp skin: It's not the most gorgeous roast in the world, but you'd be hard pressed to find one more flavorful. Specific heat capacity is the amount of energy it takes to raise a specific amount of material by a specific number of degrees. Sauces add flavor to any dish, so it’s important to not leave this step out! In the past, I've done this succesfully on camping trips or by carefully balancing a wok on top of a pile of burning coals inside a kettle grill (do not try this at home), but I recently snagged myself a Weber 8835 Gourmet BBQ System Hinged Cooking Grate ($30 or so) which is pretty much custom-designed for the task. It's an indication that your pan is not regaining heat fast enough and that the meat is boiling and steaming rather than searing and browning. To make the sauce, you can either mix all the sauce ingredients together in a bowl, or shake it up in a jar. Credit: I've produced some of the finest home stir-fries to date on my Weber since picking this puppy up. The best you'll get is food-court level Chinese food. Master the basics of stir-frying and get 26 easy, delicious stir-fry combos with this guide, Cashew, Tofu, Carrots, and Snow Pea Stir-Fry, Proteins – chicken, beef, pork, seafood, tofu, tempeh, seitan, Vegetables – pretty much anything goes for this category. It's this: ridiculously high heat. Stored heat energy is precisely what it sounds like: the energy that is stored in the pan itself. Remember: a Western skillet is designed to heat and cool very slowly and evenly. This gets more complicated when you take into account... Density. This means that given two pans of identical shape and size, a cast iron pan will weigh about 2.5 times more than an aluminum pan. Avoid butter, which burns easily at high temperatures. A wok, which is shaped like a big, wide bowl with high sloping sides, is designed for stir-frying. And we're not talking Atlanta on a hot day high heat, we're talking campfire-set-by-a-Red-Dragon-who-came-straight-from-the-depths-of-Mount-Doom-if-Mount-Doom-were-on-the-sun hot. Once your veggies are near done, add the protein back in, toss together, and then make a donut by pushing all the ingredients to the sides of the wok, leaving an empty hole in the middle. When the heat is high and the cooking quick, the Cantonese describe the result as wok hay―loosely translated "the breath of a wok." The curve of the pan makes it easy for a spatula to scrape down the sides and toss the food without accidentally turning it out of the pan. Simply toss and turn bite-sized pieces of food in a little hot oil in a wok over high heat, and in five minutes or less, the work is done. You have the advantage of not smoking out your apartment, but the only problem with this method? One more reason to use a wok instead of a stainless steel skillet: wok hei is not developed in stainless steel, at least not as readily, as it largely comes from the burning of the patina of fats and polymers that have embedded themselves in a well-used carbon steel or cast iron wok (some flavor also develops from droplets of oil that vaporize as you toss your food). It comes from a combination of polymers and oil breaking down within the skillet, and from microscopic droplets of fat vaporizing as you toss food up and over the edge of a wok into the hot column of air created by the intense burner below. Offers may be subject to change without notice. Non-stick is not a viable option for good wok cooking. Vegetables emerge crisp and bright. Again, this has to do with airflow and the top coals cooling when the wok is in place. Privacy Policy: We hate SPAM & promise to keep your email address safe. Perfect stir-fries should have a complex smoky, singed flavor known as wok hei—the breath of the wok. This is far, far too low a temperature for effective wok-cooking.
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