Why Stir Fry is Better in Restaurants (And How to Do It At Home)

Hi, I am Eric Huang, I'm a professional chef,

and today, I'm gonna show you how to stir-fry everything

in the universe.

Stir-frying is all about balance, heat,

movement, and timing.

You're going to get restaurant-quality,

delicious food on your plate in really little time.

This is Stir-Frying 101.

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So it's helpful to understand a little bit

about why stir-frying is a thing.

So usually, you cook stir-fries in a wok,

which is a very thin piece of metal,

and it's meant to be cooked very quickly.

This developed in China because it was historically

not very rich in combustible fuel,

so things were meant to cook quickly.

Stir-frying is a prime example of that,

everything is cut into thin, small, bite-sized pieces.

It's very economical, it's very versatile.

You cook it up real fast, have it on the dinner table

by 5:15.

The whole point is bringing all the seasoning together

in the pan at the last moment and eating it really hot right

out of the pan.

So hot. Usually with rice.

We're gonna cover three basic techniques for stir-frying.

We're gonna do with a sauce, dry,

and green vegetable cookery.

There are many schools of cooking,

but with these three, you can cover a huge wide base

and use pretty much everything left over in your fridge.

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Stir-frying with sauce, it's a really nice way

to add lusciousness, viscosity,

moisture to what you're cooking.

Stir-frying with a sauce

is probably what you're thinking of when we're stir-frying,

it's probably the most popular technique

when it comes to stir-frying.

We're gonna start with one of my personal favorites,

the almighty chicken and broccoli,

a Chinese American takeout classic.

So when you're stir-frying with a sauce,

the basic principles are the same

as everything else except at the very end,

you're adding the sauce at the end,

you're potentially thickening it a little bit

with a starch slurry, and then you're tossing it

all together because you don't want it

to be runny or watery.

You want this sauce that's clinging but not claggy either,

it requires a little bit of finesse.

So when it actually comes to stir-frying,

the cooking part is really only a few minutes.

All the work comes in the preparation.

So we're gonna start with a very important technique

for preparing proteins for stir-fries,

we're gonna do velveting.

As its name implies, velvet is about creating

a very smooth texture with your proteins.

Velvet is not something that's absolutely necessary,

but it also kind of is.

This is how you make really delicious stir-fries

and get that wonderful texture.

Let us velvet some chicken.

Thinly-sliced chicken breasts here,

we're gonna get that into the bowl.

And then we're going to add our egg white, cornstarch,

a little bit of baking soda, and salt.

So all of these things are going to do something different

to the chicken breast that is really important.

The egg whites are slightly alkaline, and then we add

a little bit of more alkalinity with the baking soda.

It prevents the proteins from coagulating as tightly,

so that helps with the tender texture, step one.

Egg whites and the cornstarch are going to combine

because the starch is going to distribute

throughout the protein, which is gonna create kind of like

a matrix or a lattice of starch,

that helps the chicken hold onto its own juices,

so that makes it juicy, that's number two.

And then salt, you know, you need salt

to make things taste good, and then you're going to work it

and then massage it and really, really go for it.

I'm gonna marinate. I'm gonna squish it around.

I'm being pretty forceful, kind of breaking up

a little bit of the protein structure,

you're almost kind of like tenderizing it

with your hand a little bit.

And then you're really working that starch into it,

the egg white, the baking soda, the salt.

This is really what's gonna give you

that nice texture later,

that classic Chinese American takeout texture,

which I kind of describe as smooth, slippery, bouncy.

Okay, so I've been doing this for about 45 seconds

to a minute, so this is all marinated.

I'm gonna let this sit for 30 minutes.

We're ready to go here and I'm going to make a sauce.

So I'm making a really basic brown sauce, that is

the foundation upon which Chinese American restaurants

will do 400-item menus for you.

It starts with this, we're just gonna make

a really basic one, and it focuses

on balancing the umami salty flavors and soy sauce

and the sweetness coming from sugar.

So for my brown sauce, we're gonna start

with light soy sauce, oyster sauce here,

and this is gonna add a little bit of viscosity,

sweetness, and more savoriness.

Hoisin sauce, it's gonna add some sweetness,

some color, viscosity.

Next, ketchup, I think it's a perfect condiment,

it's perfectly balanced between sweetness,

acidity, and umami as well.

Sugars, you can't just use soy sauce,

you need a bit of sugar to balance it out.

Bad Chinese takeout, poorly prepared, jarred sauces,

they're often too sweet, so it's worth the step

of making your own brown sauce.

I'm gonna add MSG. Do not be scared of MSG.

It's perfectly safe, perfectly good for you,

makes all your things taste great.

I'm gonna add cornstarch directly to the sauce,

that way, you don't have to add it as a slurry later.

Toasted sesame oil, it's very strong, it's very aromatic,

you really just need a little bit.

Garlic, just a single clove, nice and grated.

When you grate garlic, the more finely you cut it,

the more intense its flavor.

I'm gonna whisk everything together,

It looks a little cloudy and perhaps light

because the cornstarch has been distributed.

That's going to clarify once you cook it.

So we're still in our preparation phase because again,

the stir-fry is going to come together

in really just a minute or two.

So cooking the broccoli first.

Broccoli, given its shape and its rigidity,

needs to be cooked ahead of time.

It will not cook in time in the final stir-frying steps

without turning into mush.

So I like to par-cook it, and that way,

we only need to stir-fry it for just about a minute or two

to finish it with the sauce and the protein.

I like to test it by fishing one out and pinching the stem.

If it feels like it's just about to break,

that means it's pretty much ready to go.

So this is my marinated chicken and I'm going to cook it,

I'm going to do what's called a pass-through.

In a Chinese restaurant, you would take this velvety chicken

and you would either cook it in stock or water or oil.

You could fry it very quickly.

It all depends on obviously how you wanna do it.

Most people don't have a pot

of hot oil sitting around their home though,

so I think water's the way to do it.

And you've already blanched the broccoli,

so why not just blanch the chicken in there?

Gonna mix this up slightly and then gonna try

to keep these separate, and we're really looking

to just cook for about 30 to 45 seconds here.

This step for velveting with either oil or water is crucial

because these pieces are so thin, they cook very quickly,

and that's all I'm trying to do.

I'm just trying to cook it, set the protein,

and get it ready for the stir-fry stage.

Look at all our mise en place, we are well-prepared.

This allows us to bring our stir-fry together very quickly.

I'll be cooking this dish with a wok.

I really like woks because they retain heat very well,

so when you add stir-fry products to it,

you can maintain that high heat throughout,

which is a really important flavor to Chinese stir-fry.

Okay, I've been letting this preheat, and we're going

to be cooking over high heat for about a minute,

and you're going to see it start smoking slightly,

that's the oil that has been seasoning the pan getting

to its smoke point.

I'm going to use some neutral oil, high smoke point,

and I'm going in with my chicken and broccoli.

Just stir-fry very quickly.

And then I'm gonna add my sauce.

I'm gonna add it around the rim, this way, it kind of

has a second to reduce and caramelize really quickly.

Wave-like motion, up and down, you're cradling the sauce

and it's reducing against the edges just slightly,

coating everything.

I'm tilting forward and backwards, I'm rocking the motion

so it's cradling against the bowl of the wok,

and that's pretty much ready to go.

You might need a little bit of water just

to adjust the viscosity, but I'm happy with that.

And then I'm gonna go straight onto the plate,

and that is chicken and broccoli in about 45 seconds.

Because the cornstarch cooked very quickly

and thickened the sauce, we have the perfect viscosity here,

so it's not running when I tilt the plate,

it's very slow to move, and it's clinging

to all the crevices in the broccoli

and the chicken really nicely.

So get yourself a bowl of white rice and eat that.

All right, let's see.

So hot.

Nice, texture of chicken's nice.

It's not overly sweet, it's just sweet enough

where the soy sauce isn't overpowering,

you need the sugar to kind of balance it,

and I really like that.

And that's how you stir-fry something with a sauce,

a saucy stir-fry.

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A great example of dry stir-fries

are dry-fried string beans.

What we mean by dry is that there isn't a sauce.

In saucy stir-fries, the flavor comes from the sauce.

In dry stir-fries, you're getting flavors

from the high heat, aromatic vegetables,

animal fat, and light seasoning,

so they're really enjoyable when done correctly.

So here, we're gonna do dry-fried string beans.

I think that's a Chinese restaurant classic.

I really enjoy it, it's a really different way

from approaching green vegetables in Western cooking,

which are usually blanched and glazed in butter.

These we're going to cook it extremely high heat

and toss with aromatic vegetables

and a little bit of animal fat,

and it makes for a really flavorful vegetable dish.

So I have my string beans, they have been topped and tailed.

I'm going to coat them with a little bit

of neutral vegetable oil, a little bit of salt,

and then we're just going to toss, toss, toss,

just lightly coat them.

I'm going to arrange these in a single layer as best I can.

Part of the prep is the par-cooking.

We're gonna cook these string beans about 50%

of the way under the broiler, and then we're going

to finish them in the pan.

Okay, so my string beans have come out of the broiler.

You see they're a little wrinkly, a little bit charred.

You're trying to drive off a little bit

of that initial moisture.

If you did this from raw in the pan,

there would be too much water content.

It would steam, it would turn to mush.

This step is really important

because like all the stir-frying we're doing,

you're really only in the pan for about a minute.

Stir-frying is usually done in a wok,

but it doesn't have to be.

And you can do a saute pan or non-stick,

a high-sided sauteuse like this.

The key is getting it hot enough,

the key is something that you can manipulate with ease

and comfort because you need to be able to cook quickly.

So I have my mise en place here.

As you will notice, there is pretty much nothing wet,

hence why this is a dry stir-fry.

With a sauced stir-fry, all the flavors

are in the sauce that you built ahead of time.

With a dry stir-fry, we're building the layers of flavor.

We're gonna heat this up here, add a nice amount of oil.

I'm gonna add my chilies.

I'm gonna add Sichuan peppercorn.

I'm gonna just toast those for a second

to bring out their aromas.

It's not a blow your face off kind of heat.

Sichuan peppercorns are really floral,

they're delightful, citrusy.

Adding my ground pork, little bit of that saturated fat

from the rendering out of the pork fat

is really, really nice.

All right, you're just cooking that out.

A little bit of fire, always fun. Scrape that up, okay.

Moving that off the heat for a second, garlic, ginger,

a little bit of preserved mustard green.

I'm just moving it around, manipulating the heat just

by moving the pan.

All right, and then once all these flavors are built,

move it off the pan again, going in

with my dried string beans, salt, a little bit of sugar,

MSG, maybe another 15 seconds.

Let's add a little bit of wine.

I'm adding scallions,

just cooking those for a couple seconds.

So I'm tossing it, even though this is not a wok,

this tossing motion is coating everything,

getting the aromatics evenly distributed,

and then we don't wanna overcook these.

That's pretty much it. We're gonna go to the plate.

Stir-fried food, you gotta be eating immediately.

It's gotta be ripping hot, almost dangerously hot.

This is awesome. I mean, you could do this with anything.

You could do it with broccoli,

you could do it with asparagus.

'Cause you can prepare proteins this way,

it's a really versatile and delicious way

to make something out of very ordinary ingredients.

Once you learn the basics, dry stir-fries

are a wonderful tool in your arsenal.

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So for our third chapter, we're going to be talking

about cooking greens.

Anytime you go to a Chinatown market,

you're gonna notice tons of vegetables,

tons of green and leafy vegetables.

And this is pretty much a way of how to cook all of them,

they're all incredibly delicious

once you unlock this technique.

So this kind of stir-frying, what changes

is the base ingredient, what kind of leafy vegetable

you're using, the base layer technique does not change.

It's always garlic, some sort of chicken stock

or chicken powder, a salt, and oil,

and then you're stir-frying it all together.

I have Shanghai bok choy here,

this is kind of like a medium size.

I have some boiling water here,

I'm gonna add some salt to it, season it.

And just like any other steps, we're par-cooking here,

the stir-fry step is very quick, it's very short,

maybe a minute or two.

So obviously, bok choy has the leafy green part

and the stem part, they're supposed

to be contrasting textures,

so the stem is just tender, nice.

All right, my bok choy is just lightly cooked here,

and yet again, I have a wok in front of me.

We are going to stir-fry our green vegetables here.

We're going to do a technique called qing chao,

which just means clear stir-fry.

It's very simple, it's salt, garlic, oil,

and chicken bouillon powder.

In a perfect universe, you would have inherited

your grandmother's 50-year master Cantonese stock

that has had millions of chickens cooked in it.

We're just going to use chicken bouillon powder.

It adds umami, that's the really key difference

towards what makes it great.

All right, I'm gonna add some neutral oil here.

So I'm gonna add my garlic

and we're just gonna let it gently brown.

The hottest part of the wok is at the bottom,

so you just kind of wanna keep it swirling,

otherwise, it's going to burn.

I'm gonna go in with my bok choy.

Splash of water.

It's gonna help kind of finish the steaming a little bit.

Salt.

You're not looking to brown anything or char anything.

Just gonna add my chicken powder.

Just a touch of sugar, really not a lot,

just to balance the salinity a little bit.

The vegetable's gonna start to become translucent,

look a little shiny.

The water is controlling the temperature of the wok

so that your garlic doesn't burn.

And that's it, it should look glossy, delicious, shiny.

Gonna go to the plate.

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Okay, and then you gotta get all this garlic

and that little bit of stock over it,

makes them eat nice and juicy.

That's really it, so easy, just a little bit of knife work,

preparation, blanching it ahead of time.

This is gonna be really, really delicious.

That was delicious. The stem still has texture.

The leaves are really tender and slippery.

So that's really a simple basic foundation technique.

Garlic, some sort of MSG, chicken bouillon powder,

salt, and oil, and you can cook any vegetable

and really, really up its game.

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So I showed you three basic categories of stir-frying here,

but there is a multitude of techniques.

So with these three core basic principles,

you can stir-fry pretty much everything and anything.

Start with leftovers, some vegetables you're trying

to use up, and I promise it's a whole deep universe

to explore, so I wish you the best of luck

in all your stir-frying.