Stir-fry from Scratch

Tonight I made a stir-fry. I use pretty much the same recipe every time; it's based on directions from Vickey, so I can't really claim originality, but it works well. Onward...


The main distinction of this stir-fry is that the meat is not cooked in the wok itself. Rather, I always boil it first with slices of ginger, soy sauce, and, usually, some powdered garlic. Fresh garlic would work too, but the ginger is more important - I use fresh ginger roots. Previously, I've cooked sliced pork, stir-fry pre-sliced beef, and stew beef. The latter I won't use again, since it was both too tough and too fatty. Tonight I used chicken thighs - it worked marvellously. After a solid half hour of boiling, the chicken is soft, tender, and, crucially, fully cooked. Boiling it with sliced ginger and soy sauce gives it a subtle flavour.

After the chicken has been thoroughly boiled, I stir-fried it for a few minutes with cooking oil, some more garlic powder, soy, and shredded ginger. Next I removed the chicken from the wok, and started stir-frying the vegetables. In this case, I used cucumber, green pepper, Shiitake mushrooms, tomatoes, broccoli, and diced green onion. I added more shredded ginger, soy, oil, and water, in roughly that order, and let them cook, stirring regularly. I then readded the chicken. After about 15 minutes (and once the rice had finished cooking), it was done, with enough leftovers for lunch or dinner tomorrow.