Stir Fry

I realize that this is from last month, but I forgot to show you all our Chinese New Year dinner.

Here's our beautifully set table. Julia is directing food traffic.

We made Teriyaki Chicken and won tons. And rice. You must have rice.

These are the tea cups and saucers I bought when Evan and I were on our honeymoon. We went to Chinatown in Chicago and I fell in love with these. We use them quite a bit.

We had a lovely meal.




But, that's not why I'm here today. Today, I am here to tell you about how much we love to eat stir-fry. Love love love love love.

Now, I'm not saying that how we make stir-fry is the end all of all. I'm not saying it's even traditionally correct. All I'm saying is, it's super duper yummy!!!

Here are the ingredients we chose for this batch of stir-fry (Note: we change the ingredients depending on what we're in the mood for):

Broccoli; red, yellow and green peppers; onions; rice; soy sauce; edemame; water chestnuts; baby corn; mushrooms; sesame seeds; chow mein noodles.


This is the rice that we buy. Evan is a complete rice snob and we tried lots of different rices before he found this one and declared it his favorite.

We (and by we, I mean Evan, because he is in charge of all things stir-fry) start by chopping up the broccoli and steaming it.

My job is to make sure that all the other stir-fry ingredients are opened and ready to be thrown into the wok when Evan needs them.


We also decided to throw the edemame into the steam too, since it was frozen and all.

Evan decided to add carrots to the stir-fry as well.

We blanched the broccoli. What does that mean? Well, that means that we throw the steamed broccoli directly into some ice water. This will help it keeps it's color and keep it from getting soggy before going into the wok.



Evan turns the stove up to the highest heat and sets the wok on it. Once it is hot, he adds some vegetable oil and stirs it around the wok to coat it.

Look at how purple our range gets!

Once it's coated, Evan starts throwing in the veggies, starting with the broccoli.

Once they're in, you've got to pay attention to the stir-fry ingredients, constantly keeping them moving in the wok or they'll burn.

Evan starts adding his soy sauce and other sauces. He doesn't measure.

Look at him go!! Evan keeps the heat at a high heat the whole time. It's that short exposure to the super high heat that cooks the food, but doesn't burn it or make it soggy from being overcooked. It's a whole song and dance kind of cooking.

Evan decides that he would like to make a thicker sauce to pour on the stir-fry. He combines cornstarch, soy sauce and szechuan sauce.

He stirs it until it thickens.

Evan takes the veggies off the wok and puts the rice in. He takes three eggs and beats them and adds them to the rice and stirs it all together to make a fried rice.

Here is the finished product!

You can see the thickened sauce that Evan made and that we added the chow mein noodles for some crunch.

The best part about stir-fry, is that it is easily doctored to your tastes. We usually add some chicken, but went for a completely veggie one this time. You can always use tofu, pork or beef. And there are tons of other veggies that work well being stir-fried too!