311 recipes. Page 12 of 13
Quick and delicious stir-fry recipes
Chicken in a thin starch coat gets its gloss from a soy, vinegar and sugar sauce. The pineapple goes in just before the sauce and needs only a minute, until its edges look faintly translucent. Canned pineapple works too, drained lightly first.
There is no coconut milk here. Eggs and evaporated milk make the sauce, and instead of a soupy curry you get soft, moist curds clinging to the crab. The curry note comes from mild curry powder rather than paste, along with nam prik pao and Chinese celery.
Pork loin and green pepper are cut into matching thin strips so they cook together in a few minutes over high heat. Slicing the loin across the grain means even the long strips bite cleanly instead of turning chewy and stringy.
Fried chicken thighs get only a thin coat of a sour, spicy sauce made from gochujang, ketchup and vinegar, so the crust is still crisp when it reaches the table. Letting the fried chicken cool and then rewarming it in the oil makes it crunchier still.
A generous amount of finely shredded ginger gives mild chicken breast a sharp, warming smell. The cabbage and bell pepper are not cooked for long, so they still crunch.
Because the pan runs on high heat, perilla oil is not used alone but mixed in equal parts with neutral oil. The king oyster mushrooms are cut lengthwise into long strips that keep their grain, and ground perilla seed goes in over low heat for the last minute to thicken the little bit of soy broth.
Garlic cooked in butter, then soy sauce and sugar bubbling down, leave the shrimp with a sweet-salty shine. Shrimp shrink and toughen soon after they are cooked through, and the soy and sugar are mixed ahead to go in the moment the shrimp are done.
Thin strips of kombu are the main ingredient, and the pork belly is only 60 g, though its cooking water becomes the stock. Konnyaku, kamaboko and fried tofu go in too, giving each mouthful a few different textures. The liquid is cooked down until only a glossy coating is left on everything, which puts it closer to a side dish than to anything brothy.
Saltwort (sebalnamul) grows by the sea and is salty on its own, which is why the soy sauce is used sparingly. It is stir-fried with torn oyster mushrooms, and perilla powder and perilla oil are mixed in once the heat is off.
Celery keeps much of its crunch and scent after a quick stir-fry, so it stays distinct among the soy and oyster sauce beef. The pan the beef came out of is not washed; the celery and onion go straight into it.
How much liquid ends up in the pan depends on how dry the washed spinach is before it goes in. The only seasoning is a teaspoon of soy sauce, with sesame oil and sesame seeds stirred in after the heat is off.
Ketchup, chili sauce and sugar form the base, and sweet-tangy comes through before any heat. The sauce is thickened twice: first with starch slurry added a little at a time, then with a beaten egg trickled in around the edge of the wok for soft ribbons. Bread or rice goes on the side.
No doenjang goes into this siraegi (dried radish greens). They are tossed with soup soy sauce and garlic, fried in perilla oil and finished with ground perilla seed loosened in water, which tastes lighter and nuttier than a doenjang-braised siraegi.
Boiled pork gets chopped fine and fried hard in butter until the edges crisp, then calamansi juice (from a small sour Philippine citrus) and mayonnaise are stirred in at the end. Any water left on the pork makes it steam before it browns, and without crisp edges this Filipino bar snack loses its point.
The broccoli's thick stems are cut smaller than the florets and blanched with them for just 40 seconds to a minute, and after joining the beef it gets only about another minute in the pan, finishing before the green turns yellow.
Thin-sliced bulgogi beef sits in a gochujang marinade for about ten minutes, then hits a hot pan with onion. By the end there is almost no liquid left, just a glossy coat of sauce clinging to every slice.
Beef and bell pepper are cut into strips of about the same width, and one pinch of the chopsticks brings up both. The seasoning is only soy sauce, sesame oil and garlic, and the peppers go in once the beef's marinade starts to bubble in the pan.
Ketchup sets a sweet base and half a spoon of gochujang adds only a mild heat, giving these cocktail sausages a sticky glaze that settles into shallow scores and sits well in a lunchbox. Once the ketchup and syrup start to thicken they stick fast to the pan, so nothing stays still after the sauce is poured in.
Square fish cake sheets are blanched for 20 seconds before frying to shed surface oil, which lets the gochujang glaze cling more cleanly. No water is added; the onion goes in first, and the moisture it gives off loosens the sauce on the pan floor.
Bulgogi-style beef marinated in soy sauce and pear juice gets ssamchu, a leafy cabbage, at the very end, stems first and leaves a minute later. That split leaves crunchy stems next to leaves that have only just wilted, and any longer in the pan would drain the greens of their sweetness and moisture.
Crown daisy is slightly bitter and oyster mushrooms are mild, and the two stay distinct on the plate. The mushrooms are torn along the grain and cooked dry in a wide pan first; the crown daisy goes in right before the heat is turned off.
Doenjang (Korean fermented soybean paste) does most of the seasoning, with only a little gochujang, so the pork comes out savory and salty rather than hot. The crown daisy goes in after the meat is cooked and comes off the heat just as the leaves wilt, keeping its slightly bitter scent.
Dried taro stems (imogara) are soaked for 30 minutes, fried in oil with lotus root, carrot, fried tofu and konjac, then simmered uncovered in a sweet soy liquid. By the end almost nothing is left in the pot; the stems are soft to chew while the lotus root still has its crunch.
Long-aged takana, a salted mustard-green pickle, soaks for hours to lose its salt, then gets chopped fine and fried in sesame oil with a little sugar and soy sauce. Even after soaking, one piece tasted before cooking shows whether it needs more time in water. Only half the soy sauce goes in at first, and a salty pickle may not need the rest.