311 recipes. Page 11 of 13
Quick and delicious stir-fry recipes
Stir-fried in perilla oil, julienned radish loses its raw, peppery sharpness and turns gently sweet. It is one of the basic namul, used for bibimbap and set out on Korean ancestral-rite tables.
Sour, long-aged kimchi and canned tuna are stir-fried together and spooned over hot rice. The tuna goes in last and is turned over just a few times in big folds, so it stays in chunks that take on the kimchi seasoning rather than breaking into flakes. Very sour kimchi can take about half a teaspoon more sugar, and canned mackerel works in place of tuna.
Mild, pan-browned tofu breaks up the sharp sourness of aged kimchi in every bite. The finishing oil is perilla rather than sesame, drizzled once the heat is off so its nutty aroma survives and smooths out the kimchi's fermented intensity.
The octopus is already boiled, so the pan only has to warm it through and coat it in gochujang sauce. The heat goes off the moment it starts to visibly shrink, and the onion and carrot are left a little underdone so they keep some crunch.
King oyster mushrooms are firm and meaty while oyster mushrooms pull apart into soft strands, so cooking both together keeps the texture from being one note. Broccoli and carrot brighten it up, and soy and oyster sauce do the seasoning.
Tiny dried anchovies end up glossy, sweet-salty, and crisp once the glaze sets as they cool. After they go back into the bubbling syrup, 30 seconds to a minute of tossing is all they need; chasing every last bit of sauce on the bottom only makes the coating hard and clumpy.
With no gochujang, only soy sauce and starch syrup for the glaze, these anchovies are sweet-salty with no heat at all, which is why they turn up so often in children's lunchboxes. Turn the heat down as soon as the syrup bubbles once, or the glaze sets hard as it cools. Once cool, the anchovies cling together loosely, just right for picking up a small clump at a time.
Medium anchovies are bigger and thicker than the tiny ones used in the sweet version, and their heads and dark guts, which would make the dish bitter, come off one by one. Gochujang brings a fermented heat, chili flakes deepen the red, and the amount of flakes is the dial for spiciness.
Little salty grains of pollock roe are scattered through soft, creamy curds of egg. That even spread comes from scraping the roe out of its sac instead of slicing it. Half the butter goes in with the onion, and the other half melts in after the pan comes off the heat.
Myeongyeopchae, pollock floss, is finer and softer than ordinary dried pollock strips, and once stir-fried it sits between the two familiar dried-fish sides: softer than seasoned dried pollock, milder than the shredded squid stir-fry. Its cottony clumps are teased apart along the grain by hand before cooking. A spoonful of mayonnaise in the sauce rounds off the gochujang.
The shepherd's purse comes off the heat the moment it starts to wilt, so its bitter spring scent is still there. Perilla oil is used twice: half to brown the tofu, the rest drizzled on with sesame salt after the heat is off.
It is called a stir-fry, but for the first few minutes the lid stays on. Bean sprouts laid on the bottom let out enough water to keep the gochujang from scorching, and a final blast of heat reduces that liquid into a thick sauce that coats the octopus.
With only carrot, egg, salt, and oil in the pan, how the carrot is cut decides most of the result. A coarse shirishiri grater or julienne slicer gives long strands of 4 to 5 cm that still have some bite after cooking; finely grated carrot goes soft and loses that texture. The egg ends up in loose, fluffy clumps tangled between the strands rather than a smooth scramble.
This Okinawan dish is made from sweet potato starch, and while it is as chewy as a rice cake, it is neither steamed nor baked but stirred nonstop in a frying pan. The thin batter forms translucent clumps and finally gathers into a single glossy mass. Fresh from the pan it is very hot; it is torn into bite-size pieces and left to cool briefly before eating.
The seasoning is just a teaspoon each of chili flakes, soy sauce and sugar, and the fish cake's own savory saltiness comes through first. A quick dip in boiling water to rinse off surface oil helps that small amount of seasoning soak in rather than slide off.
Chicken cartilage gives a crunch first and then a chew. The longer it cooks, the more that crunch turns tough, so the cartilage is marinated for 10 minutes and then stir-fried hard and fast. Gochujang, chili flakes and hot Cheongyang chilies pile up into a fiery bar snack.
The cucumber here is cooked, but only until it is warm and glossy, never soft in the middle. Soup soy sauce and a little chili flakes are the only seasonings, giving a faint red tint with no real heat. The tofu is browned on its own and folded back in at the end.
A shallow crosshatch scored on the inside of the squid body opens up as it cooks, curling each piece and letting the gochujang sauce work into the cuts. Score too deep and the body tears apart; the knife should only graze the surface.
Water from the bean sprouts is what most easily turns this stir-fry thin. They are drained well, added only in the last minute or two, and the whole pan goes onto a plate as soon as the heat is off.
Fresh okara soaks up a dashi simmered with carrot, burdock and shiitake until it is moist yet crumbles apart under a spatula. Once the okara goes in, it needs constant turning from the bottom of the pot or it sticks. The dish is done before it dries out: no loose liquid, but still damp enough to clump and fall apart again.
Jumulleok means meat kneaded by hand with its marinade, but thin duck slices tear if squeezed, so here the gochujang sauce is folded through them gently. Perilla leaves add their scent to the spicy coating.
Osam takes its name from the first syllables of squid (ojingeo) and pork belly (samgyeopsal). The pork belly is cooked first until plenty of fat has rendered, and the squid and gochujang sauce go into that fat, so no extra oil is needed.
Ground pork hits a wok heated to the edge of smoking, and the Thai basil is added only seconds before the heat is cut, just long enough to wilt. Five chilies and five garlic cloves, pounded rather than finely minced, make this hot and garlicky, and it is eaten over rice with a fried egg on top.
Once the pan is hot, the heat stays high until the end. Pork goes in first, then shrimp and squid, then the vegetables, roughly a minute apart, with no gap for chopping or drying anything, which is why everything is prepped and lined up beside the stove. There is no starch at the finish: oyster sauce and water boil for 2 minutes and leave only a thin coat.