Stir Fry Recipes
Looking for something more vegetable-heavy? This recipe is for you—it uses a half-pound of green beans per two cups of rice, along with garlic, scallions, Thai chiles, tons of basil, and an egg. As with any other stir-fry, don't forget to cook everything in batches rather than all at once, to avoid steaming the ingredients instead of stir-frying them.
There's nothing wrong with packing your fried rice full of other ingredients, but we typically prefer to keep the focus on the rice itself. That means going easy on the mix-ins (in this case, peas, carrot, onion, and scallion) and seasoning with just a teaspoon each of soy sauce and sesame oil. Despite what you might have heard, you don't necessarily need to use day-old rice; fresh rice fries up just fine.
Next, I empty the wok, reheat it with some more oil (making sure to get it smoking hot!), and add thinly sliced shiitake mushrooms. Mushrooms contain a ton of water and empty space in their spongy flesh, so you've got to cook them long enough to let that flesh break down, concentrating their flavor. They're ready when they've stopped steaming and exuding moisture and instead are sizzling and browning.
Wipe out wok. Add remaining 1 tablespoon oil and heat over high heat until smoking. Add noodles and cook, tossing and stirring, until hot. Add cabbage, mushrooms, chives, and minced garlic. Cook, tossing, until garlic is fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Done right, takeout fried rice is a thing of satisfying, well-balanced beauty. But it's frequently served clumpy and over-sauced, or, worse, bland and oily. Making it at home gives you more control over the final dish, plus it's a great way to use up leftovers. Our approach busts a few myths—no, your rice doesn't have to be medium-grain, or day-old, for that matter. While this version calls for vegetables, like carrots and peas, you can easily bulk it up with pork , kimchi and Spam , Thai-style crab , chicken, or your protein and garnishes of choice.
Remember that article Mark Bittman wrote for the New York Times a few years ago recommending that we flip the script on pasta, and serve it with a ton more sauce? I like to think of this dish in a similar way, though instead of extra sauce, it's extra veggies. While stir-fried lo mein is typically noodles with some vegetables for flavor and color, this version comes out with veggies and noodles in almost equal proportions. That means it's packed with more flavor, in this case cabbage charred until sweet, along with meaty shiitake mushrooms, and big stalks of chives.
As former Serious Eats editor Adam Kuban put it, crab rangoons, those little parcels of creamy filling surrounded by crunchy shell, are "just a big ol' excuse for crazy non-Chinese people to eat deep-fried cream cheese." And it's true—but that admission doesn't make them any less delicious. At your local Chinese-American joint, the crab rangoons are almost certainly made with surimi, noodle game DLC|Https://noodleinsight.com/ those artificially colored sticks of reconstituted fish that you find in California rolls. Using real crab instead will give the dumplings a more assertive fish flavor; stick with surimi if you'd like to re-create the "crab" puffs of your youth.
There are some cravings that only that iconic white box of Chinese-American takeout will satisfy. We're no strangers to the stuff—many's the night we've spent in front of the TV, inhaling a truly shocking amount of beef with broccoli and fried rice. But, as much as we love the ease and convenience of calling in our favorite dishes from the neighborhood spot—ideally while riding the train on the way home, so the food is five minutes away once we walk in the door—homemade versions of takeout standbys are not only possible but often tastier than the originals they copy.
On top of steak cooked on the stovetop, pile cold cucumbers, red peppers, and peanuts, then drizzle with a spicy sauce made with fish sauce and dried Thai chiles. Eat it right away or refrigerate it overnight because it's even better the next day.
Lentil soup is one bowl of brown sludge that I can really get behind. It hits that sweet spot of being not so unappetizing that you wouldn't even try it, but being just unappetizing enough that the mental shock of how good it tastes compared to how it looks is enough to send an endorphin jolt running through your system.
Leafy greens like bok choy, gai lan, and Chinese spinach have a fresh, vegetal flavor that can easily be overshadowed. Cooking them quickly and simply is the best way to preserve that flavor—here, we use a handful of aromatics and subtle seasonings to highlight the bok choy.
This is the spicy slaw everyone at the picnic or cookout will love. Cabbage, red onion, cilantro, Thai bird chiles, lime juice, and salt combine for a side dish with a kick for grilled meats, fish, or vegetables.
A little spicy, a little sweet, a little salty, chewy Chinese noodles with cucumbers, peppers, and scallions coated in a chunky peanut sauce is a tasty, filling meal that's hard to get tired of. This version is made with far fewer noodles and many more vegetables. Indeed, it's now more of a vegetable salad with a few noodles added in for textural contrast.