I'm So Sick of the Same Stir Fry...

if you're sick of making the exact same stir fry week after week you have come to the right place I was like you not that long ago making the same stir fry with the same flavors and the same techniques and I was sick of it I was tired I was bored it was time for a change so I went into some serious stir fry research and development mode for the last few weeks and today I will be sharing with you my findings I've got three recipes from three different countries that all have their own unique techniques and delicious flavors most importantly they're all simple enough to whipped up for a nice easy week night meal all right let's start things off strong our very first stir fry we headed over to Thailand which is a Cuisine that has a lot of Chinese influence and with that comes a lot of stir fries of course and this is the Classic Thai vegetable stir fry I'm stealing this specific recipe from Andy Ricker's cookbook which is one of my favorites for Thai Cuisine trusted and approved over the years I did have Derek send over a voice note pronouncing this dish meat pacpac Rua meat and this is a dish that takes what should be just like a boring vegetable stir fry to a completely new Stratosphere through just incredible techniques and delicious flavors I've got all of my veggies here my condiments that I'm going to be using but the first thing we need to do is just get a pot of water boiling because we blanch all of the veggies before we stir fry now what I love about this dish is that it's all technique it's all flavor the veggies you use can really be anything so these are sort of inspired by The cookbook recipe with some slight alterations and I'm just peeling this carrot first and this might sound crazy but since this dish is so simple small little things like the way you cut the vegetables makes a big difference from what I've found over testing it a few times I'm going to slice the carrots in half and then just kind of slice them on this bias nice bite-sized chunks that will cook evenly slice through this baby carrots done and we'll just pile everything up here I've got some some snow peas and these will actually go in whole I've got some King oyster mushrooms which is in the actual recipe but you could definitely use other mushrooms for this I'll cut them similar to the carrot just slice right through a little bit of onion probably just need a little piece of this it's about a third of the onion I'll do some thinner slices here and finally I have some seavoy cabbage you could use Napa you could use green cabbage I just sliced around the core and then I'll just section this up sort of nice chunks like this you go veggie prepped and I think the key right here you got to just experiment with sizes and shapes because everything does kind of cook together at the same time and we want these vegetables at the end to be tender but also have a nice Crunch and it comes down to the size and we are ready to go over here for some blanchie I don't know how I'm going to do this with one hand oh boy this is a terrible idea you know what you're going to get a nice little po right into the pot come on I think this is working Zaba You do not want to skip this step in my opinion a lot of recipes will go straight to the stir fry but the blanching I think is the key and this will be just 1 minute in the water and in the meantime definitely turn on our W be ready to go there we got to cut up some aromatics which is really simple a lot of garlic that's the key to this dish I'm going to do four cloves spice is actually optional I don't even know if Andy Ricker has it in his recipe but I've got this jalapeno lying around it seems tempting we'll do a little spice and since I'm not prepped I got to really plow through this stuff before those veggies have to come out how quick can I minc garlic I'm just going to Rattle through this that's pretty damn rough but good in my book all right 1 minute up here I'll just dig these out you can see they still beautiful color it's going to preserve all that freshness all of that texture I'm telling you this blanching technique is kind of what makes the dish in my opinion and I will just get that under some cold water to retain that crispiness boom all of our veggies all right back to the jalapeno just a little bit of that we'll rattle through this jalapeno done I atics stir fry time all right we're going to get some oil in the pan just some neutral oil good bit of that that's your only fat and then we'll just get this garlic and chili starting to stir fry whenever you have garlic in there I tend to not go super high heat cuz it will burn so fast so just a nice Sizzle Sizzle already smells incredible let's make a quick stir fry sauce this is really simple my recommendation if you're trying to just up your stir fry experience go to your local Asian market I went to Hmart last week and I just completely restocked it it had been a while I needed some fresh flavors in my life so I picked out a bunch of different condiments that sort of span multiple Asian Cuisines and if you're doing this for the first time think about balancing a sauce you definitely want salty and Umami so maybe some different types of soy sauces fish sauce especially for Thai Cuisine like this some fermented miso or bean paste and oyster sauces really going to spend multiple Cuisines you definitely want those acidic notes so having different types of vinegars like a black vinegar or rice wine vinegar or different types of cooking alcohols like Chinese cooking wine or sake for Japanese Cuisine which you'll see coming up you can always throw in some aromatic oils like a sesame oil or a chili paste for a little bit of spice this vegetable stir fry has some Thin soy sauce you can use regular soy sauce oyster sauce fish sauce and a little bit of sugar I'm actually using this fermented garlic honey but since these are Browning already I'm just going to dump off these vegetables and get these stir frying in there oh yeah we'll crank the heat up now that the Garlic's protected now all of those aromatic oils are infusing in those vegetables and once that water Cooks off a bit we're going to be stir frying and this basic Thai stir fry sauce is so simple half of it is going to be oyster sauce so we'll do two big heing tablespoons of that pour some more Umami and saltiness one tablespoon of fish sauce and then even more salty 1 tbspoon of thin soy sauce and it needs that salt because the vegetables are blanched and Bland right now and then the recipe calls for one teaspoon of sugar I'm just using this fermented garlic honey stir that up there's your stir fry sauce you know you're in good shape when the stir fry sauce tastes good just out of the spoon we're still cooking off a little bit of that water but I can hear those oil pops which is a good sign we're going to add in this stir fry sauce and just coat the hell out of it it's so simple it's so fresh so we'll stir fry that for like 30 seconds on high heat and in Thai Cuisine you don't see as much corn starch like you would see in Chinese cuisine that really thick things up they keep the sauce more thin so I have a little bit of chicken stock and I like adding this after that initial stir fry of those more intense elements and this will thin things out so you have more of a sauce to eat with your rice see that sauce just want to taste that real quick so good all right so we're going to take that off the heat I'm bringing on this small pan on high heat that's all vegetables you can keep it nice and simple like that in the recipe Andy Ricker uses shrimp so it's super customizable what I'm going to do is one of my favorite techniques I learned from Derek for a tii crispy egg so I just get this thing ripping hot that was probably not hot enough it's all right and I'll crack in four eggs or whatever will fill your pan and just let that bubble away we'll hit it with a little pet little salt you want a good nonstick for this I'm using my hexclad I believe this is an 8 in pan look at that crispy but not sticking spin spin spin spin spin spin spin very careful here for the flip wow that is like a glass egg we don't want to completely cook through everything just so those eggs are Jammy so I'll get that off it's just fresh steam rice I've got some rice right out of the rice cooker straight veggies on there crispy egg cooked it a little more than I would like it but that is totally fine just kind of top that on there that's the Jamie you want right there that's what I'm talking about first bite of the day that is so comforting yet so light at the same time this stir fry has changed the game for me it's so unique in its preparation you get these vegetables that are crispy and tender and I think I'm just so used to throwing a bunch of vegetables in a walk cooking them at high heat really fast which gives you a different experience compared to what this is right here all I can say is try it out let me know what you think in the comments because we're moving on all right so a lot of you have been asking about the walk that you've been seeing in these videos this is from hexclad and they are the sponsor of today's video and to be honest when I first saw hexclad on the market I was a little bit skeptical and then I got few pans in my kitchen and everything changed now you all know how overwhelming it can be to choose the right material for your cookware between non-stick stainless steel carbon steel ceramic cast iron there's Endless Options and from my experience they all have their own pros and cons and what's amazing about hexclad is it's a hybrid of two of the best materials you get all of the benefits of stainless steel with the heat retention and the maneuverability and durability but you also get the the non-stick side that magical ease of use that every home cook loves and the reason for that is the hexagonal technology you see in hexclad pots and pants you have raised stainless steel ridges which create non-stick valleys that actually protect the non-stick coating from wearing away and I was very close to just completely ending my relationship with non-stick pants no matter how good of a pan I would buy they would wear out after like 6 months and I hate throwing things out that should be lasting you a lifetime and been using hexclad pans every single day in my kitchen for the last year and they still feel as fresh as they did when they came out of the box so if you're looking to invest in some really high quality allpurpose cookware click the link below you can get 10% sitewide off your purchase and we'll get back to some stir fries next up we're headed over to Japan for some pork shogayaki which comes in highly recommended from head culinary writer at PR home Cooks Alex who you might remember from past videos she says this is by far her favorite just go to stir fry to make and from doing a bunch of research and really studying this dish I totally understand why the flavors are incredible actually a lot of you have made the chicken teriyaki recipe from one of my most popular videos of all time on this channel and these flavors are the exact same it's Teriyaki flavors just in a totally sort of different unique form so we got to do a little prep on this pork shoulder and we are going to start off with some aromatics number one being the ginger you can't skip Ginger it's in the name of the actual dish but I'm also adding onion which I think is an amazing pairing in this dish and I'll peel the ginger and I'll take about a third of the onion and I'm just going to run that through my micr plane you can use a grater or in these Japanese recipes I see people using this sort of grating board like you would use on Wasabi I don't have one of those but it's totally fine cuz the goal is to get some type of pulpy mixture like this and a lot of times in traditional recipes you separate the juice from the actual pulp or the fiber but you don't need to do this step because the goal is just to get a ground up Pulp like mixture just like this and I'll take that pork shoulder and slice it really thin Against the Grain which is very important we're trying to get this tough cut as tender as possible and once our pork is cut thin I'll take about a third of This Ginger onion pul I'll pop that on the pork plus about a tablespoon of soy sauce and a tablespoon of sake which is both going to flavor and tenderize the pork and I'll mix that up and just let that sit for at least I would say 30 minutes but if you can get a few hours or even overnight you're going to have some flavorful tenderized pork and then I'll move on to creating the sauce which is really simple I'll take the rest of that Ginger onion paste along with the traditional Japanese Teriyaki flavors which you might know at this point we've got soy sauce mirin and sakea and I'm going to use them in equal parts 2 tbspoon of soy sauce 2 tspoons of mirin 2 tbspoon of sake and give that a mix and you've got your sauce and this dish is pretty much prepped so I'll get the walk going it's really simple how it comes together I've got the rest of this onion so 1/3 gone for the marination the rest we will just slice up nice and thin and I'm just doing some Thin slices like that and when my onion gets too thin to cut I just flip it over just rock right through it so that's my onion and then I have some extra sooy cabbage this is totally untraditional but I like to stir fry some of this a lot of times it's just serve freshly sliced as a little side salad with this dish but why not stir fry the Cabbage as well we're going to serve it both ways and since this is hot we'll start cooking the pork I actually have a little bit of pork fat here great for searing but use any type of oil you have and I'll probably do this in two batches I don't want to overcrowd oh yeah pop that in two batches it is back to this cabbage going to take a nice big dunk off slicing right through it cabbage just really going a long way in this dish That's All She Wrote that's all the prep we will turn over this pork getting a little bit of color there don't need much that looks awesome turn it up all right that's the first batch done second batch going in just going to do a quick little taste test on this pork I was shocked the first time I made this that tenderization from the sake I don't know how it works but it makes this pork shoulder so damn tender it's like butter all right that's already done and that pretty much sucked up all of that fat you can see there's a little bit left I'll add just a little bit more and then in with the onion and the cabbage and you really don't need any additional seasoning because we're dumping in this beautiful sauce and there's plenty of flavor there Crank that heat now we're stir frying now how far you take these vegetables it's up to you and they're going to soften once I pour the sauce in which is going to happen now so we'll go in with that pork and then here we go to save the day oh all that onion and ginger and soy look at that oh my God that cabbage just sucked up all of that sauce it's gone I don't even need to try that I lied to you you do really need that additional stir frying of the sauce because one it creates this beautiful glaze as you can see here but it also lightly Cooks those aromatics in the sauce the ginger and the onion you got to sweeten them up you got to take off that edge we're ready to serve so I'm going to do a little bit of rice as well half rice half cabbage and then here we go wow do a little bit more oh Stir Fry Heaven I don't know why people don't terrify the cabbage in this dish look how much raw cabbage do you really want to eat oh by the way if you don't have sake which is not always the easiest thing to find the best replacement seems to be white wine that's what people say this is everything you love about a stir fry mixed with everything you love about teriyaki sauce boom one dish I totally understand why this is Alex's go-to it's not only delicious but it's really simple to make so for this last stir fry we're headed over to China which is the birthplace of the stir fry and and a lot of these techniques and flavors and honestly I couldn't pick one recipe because there's thousands of them it's very overwhelming with slight variations and techniques and ingredients so what I did what I thought would be helpful is crafting an allpurpose stir fry sauce that you could use with whatever you have on hand which is a great meal prep tactic so really the goal here is to create a beautifully balanced sauce that's going to work with almost any meat or any vegetables so I always start out with the Umami salty flavors we've got 2 tspoons of oyster sauce 2 tbspoon of soy sauce and 1 tbspoon of miso which is optional you can also use 1 tbspoon of black bean paste as well then I move on to the acidic flavors I've got 2 tablespoons of black vinegar and 2 tbspoon of Chinese cooking wine then to sweeten things up I'm going in with 1 tbspoon of that fermented garlic honey but you could use sugar or you could use regular honey or whatever sweetener you want then to spice things up I've got 1 tbspoon of chili paste and then finally to add some body and thin it out a bit I'm going in with 4 tablespoons of chicken stock you can use another type of Stocker broth or just use water there's still going to be plenty of flavor without the stock and then finally 1 tbspoon of corn starch which you see in a lot of Chinese stir fry recipes to create that nice thick glazed up sauce now like I said this sauce can work with everything so what I did was headed out to the greenhouse which is still bumping right now in December I've got some beautiful bok choy growing in here so I just picked a bunch of assorted bok choy leaves and then on the way out I also picked up a few green onions that have been frosted but they're holding on for deer life now I was feeling something a little bit lighter so I'm using tofu as the protein in this dish and you want to use some firm tofu and I'll slice it up and just dry it off a little bit and slice it up into cubes and then I'll coat this in corn starch which will give it an extra crispiness cuz what we're going to do is air fry it which is the easiest way to get delicious crispy tofu boil it up 400° for about 12 minutes hit it with a little bit of salt and you've got beautiful crispy tofu that's great in any stir fry and then the only other real prep is chopping up some garlic and then slicing up that green onion and I'll get my walk on a nice high heat I'll add in some fat and I'll start frying off that garlic for about 30 seconds to infuse in the fat throw in those onions and just stirfry the aromatics till they start smelling delicious and Browning up a bit and then I'll throw in my bok choy and cook that for another few minutes and when that's starting to stir fry nice I'll toss in my crispy tofu chunks and then hit it with that sauce which has that corn starch in there so you can see instantly that starts to thicken up and create a nice glaze and if you need some more water to create some more sauce toss that in there to create whatever type of consistency and sauciness you like stir fry three hu Bach Choy ooh that bok choy really soaked up that sauce wow with the cornstarch coating that has that orange chicken Vibe which is really nice but different flavors again I generally as like a meal prep tactic will just make a stir fry sauce because that single sauce will last me two stir fries sa throughout the week M so good three new stir fries I am certainly inspired re-upped my game and hopefully it did the same for you if you want more videos like this click the link right here

Channel: Pro Home Cooks

Views: 246,580

Keywords: stir fry, how to spice up stir fry, best stir fry, stir fry recipes, easy stir fry ideas, pork shogayaki, Chinese stir fry, all purpose stir fry sauce, thai vegetable stir fry, Pad Pak Ruam Mit, 15 minute stir fry, Japanese stir fry, thai stir fry, easy dinner ideas, stir fry sauces, asian condiments, how to make a stir fry sauce, perfect stir fry, pro home cooks, mike g, mike greenfield, hex clad

Id: -eDmeaMy-pc

Length: 18min 21sec (1101 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 28 2023