How to make your own stir-fry sauces

simu

Does anyone have recipes for home made stir-fry sauces? Preferably using items easily found in Irish shops.

What sorts of oils and spices are needed?

Thanks!

Alanna

Garlic, crushed
Ginger, grated
Chillies, minced
Soy sauce,
Lime juice
sugar

Any quantities that you fancy, also good as a marinade for fish or chicken.

dudara

Here's a nice one for crispy lemon chicken

Take chicken pieces, crack an egg over them and mix. take each pice and lightly roll in flour. shake off any excess.

In your wok, have plenty of oil, well heated. place in the chicken pieces, a few at a time and fry until golden, moving all the time.

Mix together juice of a lemon, sesame oil, xiaoxing (sic) wine, salt and sugar together in a bowl. Drain the wok of oil, at this stage i like to fry some veg as well for a while (mm mangetout), add back in the chicken, pour over the sauce and fry until thickened.

This is yummy, using real lemon juice makes the lemon sauce sharp. I got this recipe from a book called "The Food of China", an excellent cook book. If I get a chance, I'll check the quantities to be sure.

The Sweeper

Yeah I've heard similar to Dudara's for lemon chicken;

1/3 pint chicken stock with:
2 tblsp lemon juice
2 tblsp soy sauce
1 tblsp sherry/rice wine
1 tsp tomato puree
1 tsp hot chili sauce (or to taste)
1 large tsp rich brown sugar

mix the lot together and pour over chicken as above.

NextSteps

How about a a sauce for a vegetable or prawn stir-fry? I've tried some of the packet ones from the supermarket and they tasted disconcertingly like Dolmio. Is there something simple you can make yourself, or should I venture into the Asia Market and buy a random jar?

The Sweeper

There are a bunch of stir fry basics for sauces. In my opinion, notwithstanding ginger, garlic and chopped chilis, the purely sauce-related ingredients would be:

Light soy sauce
Stock (chicken, beef or vegetable)
Rice wine
oyster sauce
sesame oil
tamarind paste (sweet and sour tasting, all on its own - mix with water to the consistency of juice)
fish sauce
chili sauce/sambal oelek (which is basically minced chili with no flavourings)
shrimp paste
eggs or egg whites
ketjap manis (an indonesian sweet soy sauce)
lemon juice
lime juice
rice vinegar
brown sugar
cornflour (for mixing with eggwhites and coating meats/veg before frying)

Also, swop around your noodles. Fat egg noodles, skinny egg noodels, fat rice noodles, skinny rice noodles, buckwheat noodles, flour and water noodles.

And that's not even starting on the sauce involving another non-sauce ingredient - garlic sauce, lemongrass sauce, black bean sauce, black pepper sauce...

What sort of flavours do you like? Sweet? Sour? Spicy? Mild? Creamy? Tomatoey? Peppery?

For instance - if you were ordering from a chinese takeaway, what would blow your skirt up?

NextSteps

Ok, there I am in the kitchen with a pile of chopped vegetables, some prawns, lots of other potential ingredients, and noodles. Also a wok. I'd like to end up with the sort of noodle stir-fry you get in Yamamori - interesting flavours, bit spicy, not just soy sauce and garlic. Not a 2am chow mein, you understand.

How do I get there from here?

The Sweeper

Tri a yakisoba sauce - yakisoba means fried noodels, so there are a million and one variations on the sauce, most of which are soy based. Some are straight soy, some are like a tonkatsu - I like this one as a sauce for fried noodles:

In a dish, mix the following:
3 tablespoons ketchup (yes, really, use passata if that horrifies you)
3 tablespoons light soy sauce
2 tablespoon mirin (rice wine)
1 tablespoon worcestershire sauce (again, yes, really)
1 teaspoon brown sugar
1/2 tsp chinese five spice powder
optional ground cloves to taste (I like 1/2 tsp)
chili sauce for a kick, or black pepper to taste

Depending what noodles you're using, pre-cook them and then run them in cold water to stop overcooking. Drain well. Put them in a large bowl. Stir your sauce through them until the noodles are well coated. (This works with whatever variation of sauce you want.)

Stir fry whatever you want to go with the noodles, in a very, very hot wok - chicken, vegetables, prawns, onions, bean sprouts etc. etc. Here's where you can add some garlic and ginger if you want - but I find garlic burns easily and the burnt flavour is unpleasant and permeates the entire dish, so if I want some, I crush a clove into the sauce and mix it through the noodles.

When your meat/prawns veg are cooked, there are a number of things you can do:

Drop the noodles in, mix up and heat the whole lot through, serve.

Remove meat/veg from pan, add noodles, fry them off thoroughly, then return meat/veg, mix up and serve.

Remove meat/veg from pan, pour two beaten eggs into pan, start to 'scramble' them, while they're still runny add your noodles, fry the whole lot off, return meat/veg to the mix and serve.

Many of the noodles houses now use their recipes online, and also sell bottled sauces - so you can get a yakisoba sauce in a jar now, I believe.

fatherdougalmag

Why so complicated? Over the past couple of weekends I've been playing around with oyster sauce, soy sauce, veg oil, ginger and garlic as a marinade. A few chicken breasts literally sliced into flakes. I've found that if you put the chicken in the freezer for about an hour, it makes them easier to slice. Less slippy Also doesn't take as long for the marinade to do its work. If poss, leave at room temp to marinade for about 30 mins. Then you can stick them in the fridge until the time is right.

If you want to do veg then par-fry them first for a few mins and set them aside. Then fry the chicken for a few mins and finish off by throwing in noodles (Amoy straight-to-wok does the trick in this house) and the veg.

A variation is to throw a couple of desert spoons of honey and finely sliced chilli into the marinade. Nice sweet sticky chicken.

Alternatively, if you can't be bothered, prepare chicken as above and then just use sweet chilli dipping sauce. You get the same effect. Sure throw some cashews, brocolli and mushrooms in too for a laugh.

God. Brings back memories of a dish I used to do in college. Chicken with random vegetables in a miscellaneous sauce on a bed of aritrary rice.