Stir it up

Stir-fried chicken and cashew is one of the most popular stir-fried dishes.

Stir-fry is a quick and economical way to cook green vegetables like caixin.  Photos by Pauline D Loh

Stir-frying is a Chinese cooking method that is now used all over the world by master chefs and home cooks. But there are a few secrets to doing it really well. Pauline D Loh shows you how

Watching Western television chefs throw everything into a frying pan and calling it a stir-fry makes me grit my teeth. There is no apparent method or order and it really makes me wonder when wide-eyed taste-testers go "oh" and "ah" over the muddled mess that is then served up.

A good stir-fry is a sophisticated cooking method that starts with the proper heat, the addition of appropriate aromatics and properly prepared main ingredients.

It is a quick, economical way to get food on the table piping hot, and with all the right degrees of doneness, flavor, texture and color.

In fact, there is a lot of science to a good stir-fry.

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First, aromatics are added to infuse the oil. This could be roughly minced garlic, thinly sliced onions or just a few slivers of ginger. Sometimes, a paste of herbs or spices is added.

All these help flavor the oil and infuse it with a fragrance that will immediately transfer to the meats and vegetables that are added next. Because the cooking time is so short, the addition of aromatics is an effective short cut to proper seasoning.

Any meat added to a stir-fry is always marinated first. Corn flour or potato starch is added to the seasoning to help the flavors adhere to the meat. The starch also forms a velvety coat as the meat sears - both protecting it and adding a tactile layer.

Vegetables must be cut into similar sizes, depending on how much time they take to cook. Leafy greens are plucked and divided into leaves and stems, with the stems going into the pan first as they take longer to soften. Leaves wilt very quickly in the high heat and are added last.

A proper wok, the ubiquitous Chinese frying pan, is a must-have piece of equipment for the stir-fry chef. Its unique shape allows food to slide to the bottom where the flames are, while the sloping sides help temper the heat and prevent the food from scorching.

High heat, all the time, is essential to keep meat tender and vegetables crisp. The food must have enough room to move around in the wok. Too many ingredients crowding the pan means the food will stew or steam instead of crisping up. There must be enough room to toss the food around in the pan, always.

Once mastered, the art of stir-frying can help you create a kaleidoscope of colorful, tasty masterpieces from vegetable dishes to meat stir-fries.

I'll like to introduce four stir-fries to start you off.

The first two are simple vegetable stir-fries, a mustard green with garlic-infused oil, and a broccoli, cauliflower and carrot stir-fry with a few sweet prawns added.

Next to come are two meat and vegetable stir-fries that are firm favorites in a Chinese kitchen - a bitter melon and pork stir-fried in a salted black bean paste, and the classic chicken with cashew nuts.

Each of these represents a certain style of stir-frying, and by substituting the ingredients, you can create your own endless repertoire of stir-fries. It's that simple.