With little experimenting and enjoying the Asian cuisine influence we came to the point where we make tasty dishes that are pretty yummy, easy and fun to make, and take pretty short time to prepare.
Healthy factor (not O'Reilly)
We feel it is healthy primarily because we know what we put in, and we try to keep the spices under control. The vegetables should not be overcooked thus you keep the good nutrients in them.
Another thing is that this type of food is typically served with rice, which especially if steamed is very healthy.
Rice
First, we like Basmati rice. This is high quality, great taste rice. You can buy it in larger bags at Sam's or HEB. There are several ways to prepare rice. Steamed rice is healthy and very easy to make especially with a rice cooker.
Put the rice in the rice cooker. It takes 15-20 minutes for it to be ready. In that time you can prepare everything else. Especially if two of you are working.
Know your ingredients
Typical ingredients we use for this are:
- Meat: sliced beef or chicken. Pork is good, too. We typically use top sirloin beef or chicken thighs. As with anything it is much better if you use meat that was not frozen. If you are using frozen meat, nice thing is that is is easier to slice when it is half frozen.
- Onion or even better scallion.
- Carrots
- Broccoli
- Green, red, or yellow peppers
- Shiitake mushrooms
- White mushrooms
- Cabbage (red)
- Snap peas
Everything should be sliced into bit sized pieces and kind of grouped so that you can easily add it to the mixture while stir frying.
Know your spices
Spices you would like to have around:
- Garlic (we like to slice it into little sticks)
- Ginger root (same here, slice it into little sticks)
- Dried chili peppers
- Fresh hot peppers (Jalapeño, Hungarian wax, or similar)
- Sesame oil
- Soy sauce
- Rice wine
- Corn starch
- Salt
- Pepper
- Wok
- Sharp knife
- Large cutting board
- Soy sauce (3 tablespoons)
- Water (3 tablespoons)
- Rice wine (3 tablespoon)
- Vinegar (1 tablespoon or less if you ask me)
- Brown sugar (1 tablespoon)
- Corn starch (1 tablespoon)
The mixture needs to be mixed prior adding it into the wok towards the end of stir frying.
Tips for stir frying
- The main thing here will be to learn how much time you need for each ingredient to get cooked. Meat and shiitake mushrooms take the longest. Then carrots, onion, and peppers. Broccoli, cabbage, snap peas at towards the end of the process.
- The thing with stir frying is that you want to use a wok or similar deal on very hot. Since everything is sliced the cooking actually does not take long. Once you start doing it there is no break for 8-10 minutes.
- Keep water next to you. Add little bit of water into the wok if things start looking too dry. Usually, you do not need much water as it comes naturally from meat or vegetables.
Making it happen
- Put little vegetable oil into wok and wait till everything reach high temperature.
- First add garlic and ginger. It should start smelling very good after few seconds.
- In 10-15 seconds add meat to the wok. Stir it so that all the pieces get to the bottom of the wok and get cooked. Stir for few 3-4 minutes. During this process I like to add little bit of salt on the meat. Sometimes here I also add little bit of sesame oil. It really smells good.
- Add carrots, shiitake and.or white mushrooms, peppers. Stir for a another 2-3 minutes. During this process I like to add little (one two tablespoons ) of rice wine.
- Add broccoli, cabbage, or snap peas. You do not want to overcook these. Again, you do not have to use all of the listed ingredients. Stir for minute or so.
- Now, add sauce and be careful to mix everything while adding the sauce. You do not want to much sauce with corn starch in one place. Stir next 1-2 minutes. Everything should start looking glazed and you are pretty much ready to serve it.
Not sure if it is visible from the picture, but this stuff is yummy. Serve on the top of rice.
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