Recipe: Basic Stir-fry Sauce (S, E or FP) - Darcie's Dish (2024)

FAQs

Do you cook in stir fry sauce or add it after? ›

Aromatic ingredients like garlic, ginger, green onions, chilies and spices. These ingredients are typically added to the oil first to infuse it with flavor. You won't need much; a few teaspoons to a tablespoon of total aromatic ingredients per person adds a serious amount of flavor.

Cornstarch! In his book How to Cook Everything Vegetarian, Mark Bittman recommends mixing 1-2 tablespoons of cornstarch with the same amount of water, and tossing this into the stir fry just when it's almost done. It thickens in seconds, picking up the flavors of everything already in the dish and coating evenly.

The first is to cook your protein and your vegetable separately, and combine them only after both are fully cooked. A second rule of thumb for stir-frying: Choose one vegetable per stir-fry. Finally, always remember to add liquid only after everything is more or less finished cooking.

"Tomatoes should never go in a stir fry — not at all." Chef Natasha Ford adds that they're too mushy. "They would just make your stir fry soupy," she says. "If you really want to use them, keep them as fresh and uncooked as possible.

Stir fry sauce is a combination of sauces that is used to bring out the flavors of an Asian stir fry. It usually contains a combination of ingredients such as soy sauce, sweet and sour sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce, sesame oil, and garlic.

Stir-fry onions first, then add hard vegetables such as carrot and broccoli. Quick-cooking vegetables, such as snow peas, leafy greens and bean sprouts, should be added towards the end of cooking. If using vegies that have a combination of both textures, such as gai laan, add the stems first and the leaves later.

For a basic stir fry, you'll want about 3 tablespoons of sauce. Most of the liquid will cook off, leaving you with just the flavors. If you'll be serving the stir fry over rice or other grains, you'll want about 1/3 cup of sauce and may want to thicken it up with a bit of cornstarch or flour.

So many different oils, the good news is you can stick with what you know – canola is great! The best oils for stir frys are the oils with the higher smoke points. These tend to be the “thinner” oils such as peanut, grapeseed or canola.

Put it over super-high heat, add the oil and then add aromatics like garlic and ginger. Start with the hard vegetables like carrots and broccoli. Stir and scoop vegetables to the side to make room for more. Then add the softer vegetables, like sliced mushrooms and zucchini.

What do Chinese restaurants use to thicken sauces? ›

Much like French food, which relies on a roux for a perfect bechamel sauce or beef bourguignon and involves butter cooked with flour, Chinese and Cantonese cuisines use cornstarch to thicken sauces. However, it's predominantly added at the end of the cooking process rather than at the start.

First, in authentic Italian cuisine, the sauce is always tossed with the pasta before it ever hits the plate. Just before the sauce is done cooking, the hot pasta is added to the saucepan. Generally speaking, we recommend cooking the pasta in the sauce together for about 1-2 minutes.

When you cook with soy sauce, it depends what kind of recipe it is and how pronounced you want the flavour to be. In braises or recipes with a lot of liquid you can add more, but in dry dishes less would be needed. The best thing to do is add a few splashes of Kikkoman to taste and then adjust the flavour accordingly.

However, cooking the sauce can enhance its flavor and consistency. If you're making homemade sauce, it's generally recommended to simmer it on the stove to allow the flavors to meld together and to ensure it's heated through.

Barbecue sauce typically contains sugar that will brown faster than the meat. This can make it difficult to tell when the chicken is done. To ensure you don't pull the chicken off too soon, add the BBQ sauce when you're nearly done cooking the meat.