Stirring Up Stir Fry Memories

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Hi folks, Happy New Year, and welcome to the 66th episode of the finest cooking blog in the western hemisphere of my town.  I'm your host, Chef G., and I am super happy to be here.  You could say I'm happier than an ant on a sugar high.  

Have you ever seen an ant all hopped-up on sugar?  I have.  In fact, I've seen a whole messed-up horde of 'em and, let me tell you, it's almost impossible to describe the crazed joy I saw on their faces as they spent an hour licking the remains of some evaporated soda pop off a picnic table.  I felt like I was watching a weird remake of the classic anti-marijuana movie, "Reefer Madness," except that the actors were ants and the drug was Dr. Pepper. 

So, if you can imagine all those tiny smiles on all those tiny faces, you'll have a pretty good idea of the huge smile on my huge face today.  The reason for my huge smile is that I get to talk about the dish I make more often than any other.  It's a dish that is fun & easy to prepare, it's healthier than most of the foods I make, it's my go-to dish when my creative food mind goes blank, and it's wide open to many variations--most of which turn out to be delicious.  Have you guessed what it is yet?

Ants, after abusing hard core sugar.  Note the drugged-out bulging eyeballs and huge smiles.

Chef G. used no drugs and licked no sugar before posing for this picture, yet his smile is just as big as the smiles on those ants.

STIR-FRY

Sometime back in the 1980's, I got my first wok.  Mrs. Chef G. gave it to me.  Prior to that, my cooking consisted of baking frozen pizzas in the oven, tossing salads, scrambling eggs, pouring cans of soup into a pan, and preparing boxes of Hamburger Helper or Kraft Macaroni & Cheese.

I truly believe that wok was the most important factor in my transformation from the lazy-bachelor cook I was as a young man to the world-class-chef I am today.  Ever since I got that thing, I've been stir-frying every kind of meat and vegetable you can think of, experimenting with new Asian herbs and spices, testing various homemade and store-bought sauces, and pouring my creations over different kinds of rice and different kinds of noodles.

I found this internet photo to show you what my first wok looked like.  It was beautiful but can you believe I wore it out after only 40 years.

Thank goodness, Mrs. Chef G. bought me another one last year.  It's the one I'm holding in the photo you saw earlier on this page.  (That would be the photo in which I'm wearing my chef's hat and a gigantic ant-like smile.)  The steel in my new wok is thicker and it radiates heat like an 18-inch-diameter sun.  I'm quite sure it will last me the rest of my life--even if, by some kind of miracle, I manage to live three more years to the decrepit old age of 70.

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It's true, you can use any kind of meat in a stir-fry.  Beef, pork, chicken and shrimp are the most common, but don't be afraid to use lamb, goat, turkey, salmon, venison, or rodent. 

It doesn't have to be fresh meat either.  Leftover meat can easily be turned into a delicious stir-stir fry.  I once diced up some two-day-old smoked brisket for one of the best ones I ever made.  I think even roadkill would be fine after frying it in hot oil with soy sauce and shallots.

Vegetable choices are unlimited too.  Heck, you don't necessarily even need meat for a good stir-fry.  Always use garlic, onions, and red chili pepper though.  Beyond that, go crazy!  I like carrots, broccoli, asparagus, green beans, green bell peppers, zucchini, cabbage, mushrooms, ginger, and probably a few other things I can't think of right now.  I'm primarily a meatatarian--not an expert on veggies--but I've heard there are many hundreds of edible plants out there.  

Today, I'm going to instruct you on how to make a basic stir fry.  To the best of my memory, it'll be a replication of the very first one I ever cooked.  After that, I'll leave the wonderful world of stir-fry experimentation up to you.  ENJOY!

The first step is to prepare a stir-fry sauce.  There are many such sauces in the grocery store but, believe it or not, I didn't know that when I made my first stir-fry.  I followed a long-lost recipe and made my own. 

Here are the ingredients.  Bring it all to a boil, turn down the heat, and let it simmer in the pan while you continue with the next steps. 

Next, cook up a batch of rice according to the directions on the package.

Cut a chicken breast into 1/2" pieces.

Stir-fry them in olive oil for a few minutes.  (I know olive oil isn't exactly authentic to Asian cooking, but that's what I always use no matter what kind of ethnic dishes I make.)  Remove the browned chicken, set it aside in a bowl, and wipe the wok with paper towel for the next step.

Get out the knife and cut some vegetables.  You can't go wrong with broccoli, zucchini, onion, red pepper flakes, garlic, and carrot.

After pouring some fresh olive oil into the wok and turning the burner up to high heat, I made a couple of videos that demonstrate the next steps.  Even though my camera man didn't film my face, rest assured that I was the one doing the narrating and the stirring.

It only takes a couple minutes to stir-fry the vegetables.  Add the chicken back into the wok and stir for another minute.  It will probably look like this when you're done.

That's when you pour a little bit of your delicious homemade sauce in there.  Stir for a minute and serve over a bowl of rice.

Oooooh-weeee, that's some good food!