Technique: Stir Frying [edit]

Other Names:Stir Fry, Stir-Fry, Stir-Fried, 炒 (Chinese), قلي سريع (Arabic), Mexa Fritura (Portuguese), Remuer pour friture (French)... All Translations

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Edited by: Colin Saunders, Alisa Escanlar, Sheri

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Red Cook: “Stir-fry Fortnight I – The Meaning of Stir-fry”

September 27, 2009

After ranting about the lack of accuracy and authenticity in Chinese cooking articles by Western food writers in my previous posts, I have to point out there are exceptions. Occasionally ...

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Red Cook » Stir-fry Fortnight II – What Ingredients?: “Stir-fry Fortnight II – What Ingredients?”

September 27, 2009

Photography by Ron Boszko My neighbor, Kim, has been stir-frying, ever since I convinced her to move her wok from cold storage to stovetop. (She inherited a great wok, completely ...

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Red Cook: “Summer Cooking with Fresh Lychees”

September 27, 2009

Summer in Shanghai heralds the arrival of bountiful local fruits like lychees (荔枝), longans (龍眼), peaches, and yangmei (waxberries 楊梅). Street vendors hawk them from overflowing bamboo baskets, which they ...

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Wikipedia

Stir frying is an umbrella term used to describe two techniques for cooking food in a wok while stirring it: chǎo () and bào (). The term stir-fry was introduced into the English language by Buwei Yang Chao, in her book ''How to Cook and Eat in Chinese'', to describe the chǎo technique. “With the help of her daughter and her husband, who is an artist with the written word, she has created a new terminology, a new vocabulary, without which the art of Chinese cooking cannot be adequately introduced to the Western world. Some of the new terms like … ‘Stir-frying,’ … I venture to predict, will come to stay as the Chaos' contributions to the English language.” (from the Foreword by Hu Shih) “Roughly speaking, ''ch'ao'' may be defined as a big-fire-shallow-fat-continual-stirring-quick-frying of cut-up material with wet seasoning. We shall call it ‘stir-fry’ or ‘stir’ for short. The nearest to this in western cooking is ''sauté''. … Because stir-frying has such critical timing and is done so quickly, it can be called ‘blitz-cooking.’” The two techniques differ in their speed of execution, the amount of heat used, and the amount of tossing done to cook the food in the wok. Cantonese restaurant patrons judge a chef's ability to perform stir frying by the "wok hei" produced in the food. This in turn is believed to display their ability to bring out the qi of the wok.