Stir-Fry: 50 Essential Recipes for Today's Busy Cook

By Adams Media

Everything® cookbooks are a popular choice for home cooks looking for fresh, original recipes that only taste like you’ve spent all day in the kitchen. But now we’ve collected fifty of our favorite stir-fry recipes to help you make easy, mouthwatering dishes. Here’s all you need to get started making tasty, satisfying recipes from Indian Curried Chicken to Gingered Pork with Udon Noodles.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster
• Release date: Dec 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781440563799

Adams Media

At Adams Media, we don’t just publish books—we craft experiences that matter to you. Whether you’re diving deep into spirituality, whipping up delights in the kitchen, or planning your personal finances, our diverse range of lifestyle books, decks, journals, and more is designed to feed your curiosity. The Adams team strives to publish content that celebrates readers where they are—and where they’re going.

Book preview

Orange Marinade

The orange flavor in this marinade goes very nicely with pork, as in Spicy Orange Pork Chops. Use the marinade with ³⁄4 to 1 pound of lean pork, adding 2 teaspoons cornstarch to seal in the other ingredients, if desired.

Yields ¹⁄4 cup

Ingredients

2 tablespoons orange juice

1 tablespoon water

1 tablespoon soy sauce

1 teaspoon brown sugar

¹⁄2 green onion, finely chopped

Cut the pork according to the recipe directions. Place the pork in a bowl and add the marinade ingredients. Discard any unused marinade.

Reusing Marinade

If you want to use a marinade as a sauce, add it to the stir-fry in the final stages of cooking. If the marinade was used to marinate meat or poultry, there is a danger that the marinade picked up bacteria from the uncooked meat. You can boil the marinade for 5 minutes to kill bacteria, or you can make a second batch of the marinade, reserving it for the sauce.

Feisty Fajita Marinade

Both sea salt and kosher salt contain fewer additives and have a richer flavor than ordinary table salt. Use one of these in this marinade to bring out the other flavors in the recipe.

Yields ¹⁄4 cup

Ingredients

2 tablespoons lime juice

1 teaspoon chile powder

1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt

¹⁄4 teaspoon ground cumin

³⁄4 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1⁄8 teaspoon garlic salt

1 tablespoon extra-virgin olive oil

In a small bowl, combine the lime juice, chile powder, kosher or sea salt, ground cumin, black pepper, and garlic salt. Whisk in the olive oil. Either use the marinade immediately or store in a sealed container in the refrigerator. Use within 1 week, stirring the marinade before adding to the meat, poultry, or tofu.

Pineapple Sweet and Sour Sauce

A 14-ounce can of pineapple chunks will give you the right amount needed for this sauce. The brown sugar complements the sweetness of the pineapple, while the vinegar and salt give the sauce a multifaceted flavor.

Yields 1 cup

Ingredients

³⁄4 cup pineapple juice

¹⁄2 teaspoon salt

3 tablespoons vinegar

¹⁄4 cup brown sugar

1 tablespoon cornstarch

1 cup pineapple chunks

In a small bowl, combine the pineapple juice, salt, vinegar, and brown sugar. Whisk in the cornstarch. Use the sauce as called for in a recipe. Reserve the pineapple chunks to add directly to the stir-fry, as called for in the recipe. If not using immediately, store the sauce in a sealed container in the refrigerator. (Use within 3 to 4 days.) Stir the sauce before adding it to the stir-fry to bring up any cornstarch that has settled on the bottom.

Strange Flavor Sauce

Traditionally, the sauce includes freshly ground roasted Szechuan peppercorns — feel free to add ¹⁄2 teaspoon if desired. If Szechuan peppercorns are unavailable, you could substitute a small amount of freshly ground white pepper.

Yields ¹⁄4 cup

Ingredients

2 tablespoons soy sauce

1 tablespoon rice vinegar

2 tablespoons peanut butter

1 tablespoon granulated sugar

2 teaspoons chile sauce

2 teaspoons Asian sesame oil

Additional water, if needed

Whisk all the ingredients together. The mixture will be quite thick at first but will become runny — add a small amount of water if needed. If not using immediately, store in a sealed container in the refrigerator. (Use the sauce within 3 to 4 days.) Stir the sauce before using.

Chicken with a Strange Flavor

The Chinese take on chicken salad, Strange Flavor Chicken, gets it name from the intriguing combination of sweet, sour, salty, nutty, and spicy flavors in the sauce. Strange Flavor Chicken is also called Bang Bang Chicken, due to the fact that the chicken was traditionally pounded to make it more tender and the meat easier to shred by hand.

Simple Sweet and Sour Sauce

To turn this into a dipping sauce, simply bring the ingredients to boil in a medium saucepan over low heat, stirring constantly. Use the dipping sauce immediately or store in a sealed container in the refrigerator until ready to serve.

Yields 1 cup

Ingredients

¹⁄4 cup granulated sugar

¹⁄4 cup vinegar

2 tablespoons ketchup

³⁄4 cup water

1 tablespoon cornstarch

Combine the sugar, vinegar, ketchup, and water in a medium bowl. Whisk in the cornstarch. Use as called for in the stir-fry recipe. Stir the sauce before adding to the stir-fry to bring up any cornstarch that has settled on the bottom. If not using immediately, store the sauce