Six cooking tips to get the most out of your stir-fry from Grace Young.
1. Choose the right wok. Use a 14-inch flat-bottomed carbon steel wok, and avoid nonstick woks. Ms. Young says carbon steel woks conduct heat well, while nonstick woks can release fumes when heating and don’t allow the food to caramelize and brown. “A 14-inch wok is the best size for a general recipe that makes four servings,” she says. “If you use a bigger wok on an American stove, you can’t heat it. A smaller wok is going to crowd your food and braise rather than stir-fry.”
2. Make sure your vegetables are dry before cooking them. “Spin them in a salad spinner, or pat dry with kitchen towels,” says Ms. Young. “If you put in wet vegetables, you take down the heat of your wok and it turns into a braise.”
3. Limit the amount of food you cook at one time. “People put way too much food into the wok,” says Ms. Young. “With the carrots and brussels sprouts I’ve used here, no more than about five or six cups go into the wok. I often see recipes that call for eight cups of vegetables.”
4. Preheat the pan. “The test I use is to preheat it until you can just flick a drop of water and it evaporates in a second or two,” says Ms. Young. Preheating the wok to this point, but not overheating it, will keep food from sticking.
5. Use the right oil. The traditional oil used in Chinese cooking is peanut oil, but grapeseed or canola oil work well too. The worst oil is extra virgin olive oil, which has a low smoking point and is likely to ruin the flavor. “People don’t realize how important the oil is,” says Ms. Young. “It has to be an oil with a high smoking point.”
6. Cut all the ingredients to the same size. “If you have big pieces and thin pieces, by the time the big ones have cooked, the thin ones are charred,” she says.
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