If you want to make a good Chinese stir fry, you need to make use of at least three of five basic ingredients. If you make use of these ingredients, I can guarantee you that any dish you make will have flavour. Choose any vegetable of your liking and add your three chosen ingredients, and you will have the perfect fried veggies. The ingredients are as follows:
- Rice wine (you can substitute this for rice vinegar but I strongly recommend rice wine)
- Soy sauce
- Sesame oil
- Ginger
- Garlic
Salt and pepper are not included in this list for obvious reasons.
You can add other things too such as onion or chilli peppers. But you don’t need to complicate yourself too much to make something tasty. As long as you stick to these five basics, you got it.
If you use garlic, do not use ginger, and if you use ginger, do not use garlic, why? because garlic and ginger compete rather than complement, using both would blur the lines between two very distinct aromatics and as a result, you will end up looking like another generic white boy cooking another generic Asian stir fry. As my old chef ujsed to say, LESS IS MORE.
Rice wine is always a must. Soy sauce and sesame oil can be added according to taste. Soy sauce can really enhance the flavour, but be very careful with how much you add! Too much soy sauce can be too over powering. Stirfried veggies are meant as a side dish, the side dish is supposed to add personality to the main dish. For example, if I make a bowl of chicken rice, the veggies would go on top, but the main dish is the rice with the chicken, that’s where the character is! The veggies would bring balance, neutrality and freshness to the rest of the dish. It is for this reason that we need to be careful with the amount of soy sauce that we add to the veggies. The same goes for the sesame oil. Although most sesame oil brands in Europe are pretty mild so this should not be too much of a problem anyway.
As for the veggies, I like to use either spinach, any kind of cabbage, or pak choi. Those are the usual greens that you can find at your nearest supermarket, but it you choose to venture into an Asian supermarket, I suggest you get some water spinach, napa cabbage or chinese broccoli.
Now let’s talk about the method. Cut the veggies, wash them in the sink (cut first then wash, so that the water can run smoothly through the stems). In a really hot pan (preferably a wok) add some oil (I can’t believe I’m even mentioning this) and stir in the ginger (or garlic). Then add the spinach. After a minute of stirring consistently at high heat, add in the rice wine around the side of the pan/wok to deglaze. At this point, the rice wine will evaporate quite quickly because the pan is so hot, when you see that happening, lower the heat and add the soy sauce and/or sesame oil. Add salt and pepper to taste (I also like to add a pinch of cane sugar for balance). Remove from the heat and quickly put on a plate to stop the cooking process (because like I said, the pan has to be really hot, so you have to be very quick to avoid burning your greens). If you use garlic, and it turns dark brown before you add in the greens, throw it away, you fucked up already. The garlic burnns in under 15 seconds so make sure that you have your greens at arms reach to throw them in when it’s time!
As a last remark, please don’t ask me about the quantities, I don’t know how many teaspoons or whatever the fuck kilograms of veggies and garlic I use. You have to feel it. You add something, you taste, and you adjust accordingly. That’s it. Overall, it shouldn’t take you longer than 20 minutes, if it does, you’re doing something very wrong :/
