How to Stir-fry Chinese Marinated Meat with Mixed Vegetable

You can just serve this one dish with rice for your dinner!

By ChefSarawak@NZ Chef Si

Please note that I am very health conscious I will come to an extent using the alternative ingredients which I think will help my guts. There is no MSG, chicken essence added to my recipes in the following shown stir-frying video.

Why do you think your stir-fry vegetable is not as nice as the what you ate in a Chinese restaurant?

Are you thinking like your kids that restaurant food is much better than mommy’s home-cooked food?

Yes, you can cook as nice as what a Chinese restaurant stir-fry vegetable provided you get your MSG, chicken essence, wine and lots of oil ready, but do you want to get thirsty in the next two hours?

To stir-fry Chinese vegetable, high heat is necessary, no harm when flambe happened the moment you added the wine, but make sure your fire alarm won't get activated.

One thing about home-cooked stir-fry vegetable is it could be organic vegetable harvested right from your backyard or organic vegetable given by your neighbor or friends. If you use the organic meat for your home cooking, you will discover how tasty and sweet the meat is.

Why do you think your marinated meat is never as juicy and soft like the restaurant served?

Why do you think your vegetable turn yellow too quickly?

Your wok size is important to determine how much food you are going to stir-fry in there!

Here are points and tips for marinating meat and stir-fry vegetable for around two servings portion, to save time for washing, just place the cut meat directly to the wok or stir-fry skillet/pan. Marinate your cut meat inside the wok directly. Push the marinated meat aside before you start to heat the oil, when the oil is getting hot, seal the marinated meat.

Marinating juicy meat:

1.  Cut a handful size of your organic meat into bite size, either in slices, julienne or macedoine.

2.  Mince 20g of meat, the best with a little fat attached

3.  Add 20ml water into the cut meat and minced meat, massage the meat until the meat “drinks the water.

4.   Add the water for another one or two more round depend on how “thirsty’ is the meat.

5.   Let the meat absorb the water completely, then you add in 1 tbsp of sesame oil, mix well

6.  Then add 1 tsp of corn starch (some chefs would add egg white to make the meat more tender, but majority of Chinese chefs would add sodium carbonate, corn starch and egg white to tenderize meat) ¼ tsp Korean fermented chili powder, ½ tsp of white wine vinegar, 1 tsp of dried red yeast rice wine (or any quality dried rice wine), 1 tbsp of Japanese Mirin, a pinch of black pepper powder, 1 tbsp of Japanese/Korean made/homemade miso paste.

Vegetable:

Tips to stir-fry vegetable: You just need a combination of around 3 to 5 different colored vegetables. The harder vegetable like carrot and French bean should be stir-fried first and bean sprout or spring onion should add at the last, have a quick stir then turn off the heat. You can wash your vegetables, drip dry on a larger tray, separate each vegetable as their cooking time are all different.

1.   1 big palm size cauliflower, cut into florets (Make sure enough for two servings portion)

2.  1 small carrot, sliced

3.  5 garlic chive flower stems, cut into an inch long

4.   4 medium size mushrooms. Any kind of mushroom, sliced

5.   ¼ any choice of capsicum, cut equal size to garlic chive flower stem

6.  2 cloves garlic, mash with the back of a knife, then mince finely

7.   4 tbsp vegetable oil (Use less oil if you use non-stick wok)

8.  TT ground black pepper and salt (may not need it as miso is salty enough

9.   2 tbsp of dried rice wine

10. Marinated meat

11. 100ml reduce meat stock or meat jus mixed with ¼ tsp of tapioca starch

Method:

What Chinese restaurant chefs do to the meat and vegetable is they would always deep fry them first quickly before stir-frying, or an alternative is blanching them first quickly before stir-frying. The purpose of this “blanching” in a limited timing is to inactivate the enzymes quick with a high temperature (but not too high, there is a certain degree and timing for certain vegetables, like cauliflower, is 100C boiling for 2 minutes), or else these enzymes could turn the vegetable to black colour later. Dipping in icy water after blanching is to prevent the vegetable from being overcooked.

Anyhow, if you eat your stir-fry vegetable right away, you don’t need to worry much, just keep stir-frying in a simple and less dangerous way without a pot of hot oil or boiling water, especially if your little toddler is screaming and wanting to get into the kitchen. But make sure your wok or skillet is very hot (but not burning)

1.  Heat up 4 tbsp of oil, seal the marinated meat, add carrot and capsicum, stir- fry for 30 seconds, add minced garlic. Note: You can take away some oil after sealing if it is the non-stick wok.  During the stir-frying, if you feel it’s too dry, you can always add little hot stock gradually but never too much.
2.   Add cauliflower, use two spatulas to stir-fry, try to incorporate air during stir-frying or you "rock" your wok or skillet/frying pan.
3.  Add mushroom and garlic chive flower stem
4.  Lastly, deglaze with rice wine
5.  Check seasoning with black pepper and salt
6.  Serve with rice
7.  Bon appetite!