311 recipes. Page 6 of 13
Quick and delicious stir-fry recipes
Most of the flavor here comes from the scallions. Thinly sliced and fried until their edges turn golden, they leave behind an oil that coats the shrimp and every grain of rice, so soy sauce and oyster sauce are all it needs.
Mung bean jelly (cheongpomuk) is nearly tasteless and breaks easily, and keeping the pieces whole takes most of the care in a stir-fry. A 30-second blanch firms the surface a little and washes off loose starch, which helps the soy sauce stick.
Despite the Korean name, which points to gim (roasted laver), this bowl is built on rehydrated wakame. A short toss in sesame oil with garlic keeps the seaweed slippery and chewy while turning its sea smell nutty. With only five ingredients, water left in the wakame does the most damage: it spatters in the hot oil and thins the soy sauce until the whole bowl tastes flat.
Pasteurized, food-grade pig blood mixed with red miso cooks down into fine brown crumbs once the red liquid disappears. Those crumbs cling to strands of dried daikon, which are braised with seasoned pork belly, kamaboko and pork stock until most of the liquid is gone. Hihatsu, an Okinawan long pepper, and a little salt go in at the end.
Browned ground beef gives this fried rice its savory base, with onion, carrot and zucchini diced just a little larger than the rice so they keep some bite. The beef is left alone in a hot pan before breaking it up, and the browned bits stuck to the bottom carry much of the flavor.
Chili paneer comes out of Indo-Chinese cooking, the fusion style that grew from Hakka Chinese communities settled in Kolkata. Paneer, a fresh Indian cheese that holds its shape instead of melting, is dusted lightly with cornstarch and pan-fried until crisp outside and soft within. Soy sauce, chili sauce, and a little vinegar coat the cubes for only about 30 seconds, leaving them dry rather than sauced.
The Spam does most of the seasoning. There is only a splash of soy sauce, and cubes of Spam browned at the edges give salty, crisp bites all through the rice.
Before the rehydrated chwinamul (aster scaber, a Korean mountain green) goes near the pan, it is dressed by hand with soup soy sauce, minced garlic and perilla oil, the way a namul side would be. Seasoned first and cooked second, every strand ends up evenly salted.
The eggs are cooked first until barely set and lifted out, then large tomato wedges go into the same pan with soy sauce and a little sugar. Some of the tomato breaks down into a thin sauce and the rest stays in pieces. The eggs return for a quick fold, and whatever red juice is left in the pan goes over the rice too.
Perilla oil goes in twice, once to heat the pan and again after the heat is off, so its nutty smell sits on top of the slightly bitter chwinamul, a wild aster green. The boiled greens are squeezed only until they stop dripping, and whatever water is left cooks off in the pan with the soy sauce.
This takes the Chinese home classic of tomato and scrambled egg (xihongshi chao dan) and adds rice to the same pan. Sweet-sour tomato juice stains the rice red, with big, soft pieces of egg running through it.
Big 5 cm lengths of green onion carry as much weight as the meat in this soy-glazed pork neck. Kept apart from the onion, they go in only once the sauce has turned glossy on the pork, so their edges soften while the centers keep their shape.
Carrot gets a one-minute head start before the onion, zucchini, bell pepper and corn follow. The order goes by how long each vegetable takes to cook, not by how much water it holds. Everything is cut to about 5 mm so it spreads evenly through the rice, and the corn kernels give little bursts of sweetness.
A mild soy and garlic glaze, browned onto chicken, carrot, and onion, makes a stir-fry with no chili that sits well over rice. Breast or thigh both work, but cut the pieces to an even thickness so the thin ones do not dry out before the thick ones cook through. An opaque surface says little about the center, but cutting into the thickest piece before the pan comes off the heat shows whether it is done.
Think of it as a close cousin of teriyaki: the same sticky sweet-salty shine, but with garlic and ginger fried in the oil first so their sharpness comes through more directly. Patting the boneless thighs dry matters, since a wet surface colors slowly even over high heat.
Chicken gizzards have a springy, chewy bite, and peeling off the silver membrane and any off-smelling bits, then a quick blanch, keeps their flavor clean. They toughen when cooked too long, yet the thickest one still has to reach 74°C at the center, and that reading, not the reduced sauce, decides when to stop.
Chicken feet are mostly skin and cartilage, with a sticky, gelatinous chew, and the meat is nibbled off between thin bones. Boiling them first strips the slippery coating so the gochujang and chili flake sauce clings thickly. How hot it gets comes down to the number of cheongyang chilies.
A small amount of curry powder in the gochujang marinade is the Chuncheon touch. No water goes into the pan; the cabbage, torn into large pieces, releases enough to turn the marinade into a sauce. When the chicken is gone, rice is fried in whatever sauce is left.
Young spring mugwort is mild, with little bitterness, and lean chicken breast leaves its grassy scent clear. The seasoning is kept light with soup soy sauce and cooking wine, and the mugwort, tough stems picked out, goes in last and comes off the heat while still bright green.
Dallae, Korean wild chives with small white bulbs, join the gochujang pork only once the meat is fully cooked. They get a single minute over the flame and finish wilting in the residual heat after it is turned off. Their sharp, pungent scent is strongest at the white bulb end.
The deodeok, a fibrous mountain root, goes into the pan ahead of the eggplant and onion, because eggplant cooks far faster. Its earthy bitterness is toned down beforehand with a short soak in salted water.
Deodeok root and thin bulgogi beef share one sweet-spicy gochujang sauce, but not at the same moment. Two thirds of it marinates the beef for just 10 minutes, short enough that the meat does not turn too salty, and the rest goes straight onto the deodeok later in the pan. The root is pounded lightly to loosen its fibers, yet left thick enough to hold together when tossed.
Ground perilla seeds are whisked into water ahead of time, and that perilla water goes in once the Korean zucchini (aehobak) and oyster mushrooms start releasing their juices. Stirred for a few minutes, it thickens until it stops running and simply coats the vegetables. Soup soy sauce does the seasoning.
Balloon flower root has a sharp, bitter edge, so the torn strands are rubbed hard with salt and rinsed twice before they meet the pan. The sauce is gochujang sweetened with oligosaccharide syrup and sharpened with chili flakes, cooked only until it clings to each strand in a thin, glossy layer. Brief cooking keeps a firm bite in the root.