Stir-Fry

Recent Recipes

• 1

  Velvet Egg White “Crab”

  This is a “crab” dish with no crab.
  
  As is often the case, most of these culinary origin stories sit somewhere between historical fact and mythical folklore. But the story goes that somewhere between 110 and 160 years ago, Dowager Empress Cixi had a sudden hankering for crab. As the de facto ruler of China in the late Qing dynasty, her court was in Beijing, far from the sea. Which is to say that crab was not readily available. The imperial chef on duty, as it goes, then invented this dish to imitate the texture and sweetness of crab, interestingly with little more than eggs.
  
  As time passed, this dish is now better known as a Shanghainese dish, where chefs further south have perfected its presentation. The bulk of the dish is made from velveted egg whites: egg whites emulsified with starch and cooked at a low temperature until they fluff up into little clouds that look like delicate crab claws. The egg yolks are in fact intensely savory salted egg yolks that turn powdery like cooked crab roe. The entire dish is then drizzled with a vinegar sauce similar to that served with Shanghai’s famous hairy crab, to echo its imitation. Some iterations of this recipe, indeed, have come full circle and include real crab in the stir-fry, though it is omitted here, for dramatic effect.
  
  Despite the origins of this dish as a form of imitation crab, I find this dish to be quite a nuanced exploration of texture; all in all, this is quite a technical dish. Which explains why I’ve chosen to include the primary technique, “velveting,” into the English translation of the dish. Elsewhere, this dish may be translated in English as “scrambled egg whites ” or “mock crab,” which belies the elegance and skill behind developing this dish.
  
  

• 2

  Tomato Rice (Tamatar Biryani)

  We made this rice for Raghavan Iyer—Cookbook Author, Magazine Writer, Culinary Educator—and I'm thanking him for writing this recipe.

• 3

  Sweet & Sour Braised Fried Eggs

  
  While there’s something particularly arresting about a fried egg with a gooey, or runny egg yolk, it’s important not to discount the wonders of a well-done fried egg with craggly brown edges and a deeply flavorful center. After all, we refer to the flipped fried egg in Chinese as a “wallet egg” because of its shape and the implication of gold, hidden within.
  
  “Overcooking eggs” beyond their gooey textures might feel like a sacrifice in flavor, but it is a great way to coax more flavor out of them. The added cooking time allows amino acids and sugars in the egg to undergo the Maillard reaction, amplifying the distinctive flavor of its caramelizing, brown bottom. Eggs themselves are also immensely flavorful and lend savory flavors to the liquid they’re cooked in, not unlike cooking meat in liquid.
  
  This recipe is a popular home recipe with no particular regional origin, likely popular in China because of its virality on social media. It shares some similarities to the Golden Coin Eggs recipe of taking eggs beyond their usual point of doneness to extract flavor, and the sauce is a brown sweet and sour sauce that thickens as it cooks.
  

• 4

  Golden Coin Eggs

  Golden Coin Eggs are a typical dish from the Southern Chinese province of Hunan, known for its bright, spicy dishes that pair immaculately with rice. The golden coins in questions are made from boiled eggs, sliced into medallions. The egg slices are coated lightly in starch before being fried to set their shape and give them a bit of color. Then, the dish is stir-fried with a generous amount of garlic, red, and green chiles.
  
  Though the recipe is quite simple, this addictive Hunanese dish is all a result of proper wok technique and adding ingredients to the stir-fry at the right time to best activate its aromatics. Adding the pre-mixed sauce to the side of the rim also ensures a well-seasoned, caramelized sauce that ties the peppers and eggs together.
  
  Taking inspiration from this popular dish, the same boiled egg medallions can be used for any other stir-fry dish, especially with vegetables that can provide crunch and textural contrast.
  

• 5

  Homemade Knife-Cut Noodles with Simple Pork Chao Mian

  Knife-cut noodles (Dao Xiao Mian) are legendary in China, a specialty of the Shanxi province. They are known interchangeably as knife-shaved, knife-cut, pared noodles, or even peeled noodles. The method of making them is an art form that takes years of practice, but I've discovered an easier way to make them at home.

• 6

  Hunan Hand-Torn Cabbage With Bacon & Chiles

  "This stir-fry is about cooking the kinds of vegetables that don’t really want to be cooked properly and evenly—like cabbage. The method applies to any stir-fried vegetable that has an irregular shape, or that has something about it that defies even cooking inside of a pan. Cauliflower and broccoli are both great examples of this.
  
  In Chinese cooking, the wok is heated to a very high temperature, meaning the vegetable only cooks for a short amount of time—a couple of minutes. In order to ensure even cooking, we usually like to blanch that vegetable before it’s stir-fried. In a traditional wok setup, you’re going to use the wok to blanch the vegetable, then you’ll take the water out, then get to the stir-frying. But in this case, if you’re at home, you might have to use a separate pot for blanching." —Lucas Sin