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Stir frying is a common Chinese cooking technique used because of its fast cooking speed.
Cantonese restaurant patrons judge the chefs by their "wok hei" (their ability to bring out the qi of the wok, which shows in the food as the look, smell, and taste).
A traditionally round-bottom iron pan called a wok is heated to a very high temperature. A small amount of cooking oil is then poured down the side of the wok (a traditional expression in China regarding this is "hot wok, cold oil"), followed by dry seasonings (including ginger and garlic), then at the first moment the seasonings can be smelled, meats are added and tossed, then once the meat is seared, vegetables, rice and/or noodles, along with liquid ingredients (for example often including premixed combinations of some of soy, vinegar, wine, salt, sugar, and cornstarch) are added and the wok may be covered for a moment so the water in the liquid ingredients can warm up the latest additions as it steams off. In some dishes, or if the cooking conditions are inadequate, different components may be stir fried separately before being combined in the final dish (if, for example, the chef desires the taste of the stir fried vegetables and meats to remain distinct).
The food is stirred and tossed very quickly using wooden or metal cooking utensils. Some chefs will lift the wok to the side to let the flame light the oil or add a dash of wine spirit to give the food extra flavor. Using this method, many dishes can be cooked extremely quickly (within a minute).
Some dishes that require more time are cooked by adding a few dashes of water after the stirring. Then the wok is covered with a lid. As soon as steam starts to come out from under the lid, the dish is ready. In this case, the food is stir fried on high heat for flavor and then steamed to ensure that it is fully cooked.
Cultural differences
Most home kitchens in the West are poorly equipped to stir fry properly. The average kitchen is not designed to handle the large amount of oil vapour produced as a byproduct of proper stir frying. Those stir frying at home cannot achieve the same flavor as in restaurants because the wok is neither hot enough nor big enough to allow fast tossing. By contrast, most Chinese home kitchens are designed with stir frying in mind. The kitchen itself is either in a separate building or in a room with access to the outside. The stove is usually separated from the rest of the kitchen and near a large window to allow for ventilation. The kitchen itself usually is lined with tile or brick for easy cleaning. In the western world, remedies can be to purchase specially designed vents to direct the oil vapour out of the house better.
Western-marketed woks with non-stick coating are not considered appropriate for proper stir-frying because the Teflon coating usually disintegrates after exposure to high heat. By contrast, low heat non-stick stir-frying is an oxymoron according to Cantonese cooking standards. Teflon woks also require the use of Teflon-safe utensils made of plastic or wood, which some traditional Chinese stir fryers deem are not as effective as metal utensils. Western woks are also usually flat-bottomed to accommodate for western stove tops that are flat, where a round-bottomed wok would roll around.
Many Western cooks on TV demonstrate stir frying on low heat with a small wok and a stirring motion comparable to tossing a salad. This is a western adaptation of stir frying, but is different from the traditional Chinese method.
See also
References
- Young, Grace (2004). The Breath of a Wok. Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-7432-3827-3.