Stir Fry 101 (feat. J. Kenji López-Alt) | Basics with Babish

(soft jazz music) - Must be great for kids. I'm not trying to be a couple of old friends up here. Hello friends, it is an honor for me to have a very special guest. In today's kitchen, something that took many years to achieve. Finally we have you here, the man who taught me how to cook, and I'm not exaggerating, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt, thank you very much for coming. - Good to see you. We realized that the last time we were in the same room together was about 10 years ago. - Yeah, I was trying to get an internship at Serious Eats and I probably came out too strong.

I thought, "Guys, I'll work 80 hours a week for free." And they probably said... I think things turned out well for you. - It worked, yes. I focused those energies, you know, not on strangers who were afraid of me. Instead, alone in my basement and it finally brought you here. - Yes. - You're here to tell me both about your new cookbook, "The Wok." - Yes, "The Wok." - Why did you write a book about a wok? - Well, I was writing this book and originally this book was going to be a two-volume box set and we ended up cutting about half of it because no one was going to buy it.

Is so big? - Yeah, you know, you have to keep it, you know, travel size, right? - Yes, exactly. - Nine hundred odd pages? How many pages are you throwing away here? 900 and... 950. - 958. - Well, we basically ended up eliminating everything that was not American, or something similar to American. And one of the chapters was a chapter on the wok. - You were clearly saving them for something. - Well, saving some of them. But then, you know, I started writing the book, I started writing the second volume of "The Food Lab" and this chapter started to grow and grow.

And I quickly realized that, you know what, there's enough about a wok to write another long book, like "Food Lab." - You wrote a book about a kitchen utensil that is bigger than my entire book on cooking that I am writing right now. It is clear that today I am here to learn from you. I think we all know that. Because I have learned a lot from you, especially that woks are versatile. To a white person, you think of them as just sauté machines. We are very confused by this, by this device and by the metal it is made of.

So I'm very excited, not only to learn how to use it correctly for the things we obviously know it should be used for, like

stir

-frying, but also to learn some not-so-obvious uses. Because, as you mentioned, and the reason this book is so beautifully thick and so well-marbled is because it is packed with information on such a versatile tool. And I'm very excited to learn more. - My lens was thick and marbled. - Normally when I'm filming things like this, I have Kendall there doing the prep for me and also being someone I can ask for expertise.

In this case it will be quite the opposite. -Who does all the real work? - Where I will go to cut vegetables and you will remain the knowledge here. So you'll have to do double duty, but today I'll try to be your assistant there. I'm going to do your mission. Thanks so much for coming, man. - Awesome. I'll see you, I'll see you right now. - Alright. - Goodbye, hello. - So the most important thing in a

stir

fry is the prep work, which is by far the most time consuming and the most important. The reason it's so important is because with stir-fries, you generally cut the food into the shape and size you're going to eat it.

Because people will eat them with chopsticks, right? And that means cutting into small pieces. And you also want to make sure they're all cut up so they cook at the right pace. So what we're going to do today is cook a pork and cucumber stir fry. If you've never tried spicy cucumber, sautéing it is a great way to try it. Then these pigs will become splinters. So I'm starting with the first one, taking pork loin and cutting it into flat pieces like this. So now I'm going to cut the meat lengthwise into thin slices and this recipe, the recipe in this book, only requires marinating.

But I was thinking about also velveting the meat before cooking it. - That? - So we can show you the technique, but also show you that, you know, a lot of this stuff really suits your personal taste. So if you prefer the texture of velvety meat, you can make it with virtually any recipe and the recipe will still work as written. - Kenji, what the hell is velvety meat? - Ah OK. So, velveting is a technique in which the meat is cooked at par. And essentially what you do is you marinate it and the marinade includes a little bit of egg white and starch, meaning egg white and cornstarch.

And then you simmer them briefly for a second or two, about 10 seconds. Whether you're going to velvet or not, and we'll get to that, the most important step when working with meat is washing it. And I know there's been all this stuff happening on the internet before about how to wash chicken and why you shouldn't wash it. It is true that in Western recipes, when working with large cuts of meat, they are not washed. Washing the meat for stir-frying is what will give them that really tender texture. So I'll take this to sink. Oh, and I'll grab first.

So the way I'm doing this, I'm being very, very hard on it. I'm acting like I'm wringing out the clothes and trying to squeeze out as much of the pigment and kind of excess minerals and stuff from inside. Those are the things that will cause it to discolor in the first place. But by squeezing it like this, you're also loosening the muscle fibers so they're easier to absorb the marinade and flavors. And B, it comes out much more tender. As you can see, I can get this back, but the last thing I was doing is trying to get as much moisture as possible.

So I have it in a colander and you can see everything coming out of it, but I'm really squeezing it, like I'm wringing out clothes. - And then you're left with this pork that's been, you know, you take away pigment, you take away liquids and you're left with pink lemonade. Cute pink slime... Yeah, cute pink slime, right? - It looks delicious. Oh yeah, sorry, sorry. This is the ultimate Shaoxing cooking wine, if I say it correctly. - Okay, great, great. - These are some pickled jalapenos I made. Those are the only pickled chiles we have. - Great, that will work. - Sesame oil, this is an egg. - There is some sugar? - The sugar is there. - Sugar.

Alright, now let's marinate our pork. I'm going to start with the very basic marinade. So we're going to use a little bit of sugar, about 1/2 teaspoon of sugar. This is for a pound of meat. 1/4 teaspoon white pepper, teaspoon soy sauce, this is light soy sauce, Chinese light soy sauce. That's L-I-G-H-T, not L-I-T-E. There are two types of light soy sauce. So, L-I-G-H-T is regular Chinese light soy sauce and separates it from dark soy sauce, which is sweeter and darker in color. L-I-T-E soy sauce is low sodium soy sauce and that is a very different product. So what you are looking for is Chinese-style light soy sauce.

And if you can't find that, you can always use Japanese style shoyu, like Kikkoman, something like that is fine. A little soy sauce and about a teaspoon of toasted sesame oil and a teaspoon of Shaoxing wine. If you can't find Shaoxing wine, you can use dry sherry, dry vermouth, something like that. Now the last ingredient I'm going to add here is some baking soda. This is about 1/4 teaspoon of baking soda. Now, baking soda is kind of another secret ingredient when it comes to getting that super tender, almost slippery texture on sautéed meats. The alkalinity of baking soda is what prevents the muscle proteins from binding together too much so that excess moisture is not squeezed out and the meat becomes more tender as it cooks.

In fact, I'm also going to add, because we're going to velvet, I'm also going to add an egg white. So egg white is also alkaline, so it will enhance that kind of tenderizing effect as well. In the case of velvety, what it will also do is combine with the cornstarch that we will add and form a kind of layer, approximately a teaspoon of cornstarch, on the surface of the meat. And this one I'm going to jump right into with my hands. What we're going to do is blanch this very briefly in water and it forms a sort of very thin, slippery layer on the surface that, first of all, helps retain the moisture that's coming out of the pork. , will help retain it so it stays juicier.

But it will also allow sauces and such to adhere. It also makes the sautéing process much shorter. So if you have a relatively weak stove, or if you're working on electric or induction and can't get that really big flame, fluffing it up before sautéing will allow you to make sure it's fully cooked before you go in. bread. And then you won't have that problem where it starts to ooze moisture, bubbles and steam instead of frying. Alright, so this is what we're looking for. Now, you can set this aside, you know, in the refrigerator overnight and the marinade will deepen.

It will be more tender and juicy. We'll set it aside while we prepare the remaining ingredients and it will still turn out fine. Alright, now we have our marinated meat. We'll be velveting that in a second, so now let's get the other ingredients going. So I'm going to start with the sauce. This recipe is a very, very simple sauce. So it's about 1 1/2 tablespoons light soy sauce, 1 1/2 tablespoons water, if you had it you could also use chicken broth. Andrew, do you have chicken broth? - Yes, I have chicken broth. - I already poured the water so it doesn't matter. - Actually, you know, I made a really delicious shrimp broth if you're interested. - Oh yeah? - I don't know if that's useful. - Sure.

Do you have more soy sauce? Yes, let's use your shrimp broth and hide the seafood in dishes where you don't expect it. So we're making a very simple shrimp broth sauce. If you don't have shrimp broth at home, you can ask Andrew to make it for you. About a tablespoon and a half of shrimp broth and an equal amount of soy sauce, and then a little bit of white pepper again. Alright, now we have our sauce. We'll make some cornstarch and this is what we'll use to thicken the dish at the end and make sure the sauce adheres to the meat.

So we'll use about a tablespoon of water and a teaspoon of cornstarch. So one of the things that I did in my book for any of the stir fry recipes was, before I start, I have this list of all the different bowls that you should have, including all the empty bowls, all the empty plates. , all the things that, every single thing that you should have at your station before you start stir-frying, because that's the most important step when stir-frying is making sure you have everything ready before you start. So let's see, I've got my pork marinated, I'm going to finish velveting it.

Ginger, garlic and chilies. I love cutting garlic. I really like doing this, which is when you have a nice, flat Chinese style butcher knife, like you're just hitting the garlic. So you hit it hard and then give it a little slide, so the garlic doesn't fly everywhere. Alright, now, ginger, let's just cut these up. So they will end up as whole slices on the plate. This is a very tender ginger, so the skin is nice, soft and tender, so there is no need to peel it. So you can do it exactly the same as garlic. You cut it into a coin and then you give it a little tap and you can see that it's basically already chopped.

You just have to break it up a little. Garlic, ginger and pickled chilies in a bowl. The recipe calls for these pillies with Thai style chickpeas, (everyone laughs) pickled chilies. What we'll be using today are these pickled jalapenos that Andrew made himself. Alright, now let's move on to the cucumber. I want to get the seeds. When you prepare vegetables, especially for stir-fries, you want to get rid of any very watery pieces. Particularly for cucumber, you know, sometimes you want to remove them just for presentation or to concentrate the flavor or whatever. With sautéing it's really essential because the seeds have a lot of water and water is kind of the enemy of high heat.

All the energy it takes to take a drop of water from zero degrees to one hundred degrees Celsius, so from freezing to boiling, it takes five times as much energy to take it from there to evaporate. So any kind of excess liquid in the pan will cause the heat to go down very quickly. And we will cut them into 1/4 inch slices. Okay, so the recipe calls for putting the cucumbers and scallions in a bowl, since they are going to go into the wok at the same time. So here I am cutting these scallions into sort of one inch segments.

So we got our sauce, we got our pork, we got our cornstarch mixture. We have cucumbers and scallions, garlic, ginger and pickled chilies. Alright, this is where I'll start the velveting process. This is our marinated meat. Remember that you have egg whites and cornstarch in the marinade, egg whites, baking soda, and cornstarch in the marinade, along with a few other things, but those egg whites and cornstarch are the important part when we talk about velvety. . Here I have a wok full of waterboiling. Basically I'm going to put the meat and divide it with some chopsticks. The idea is that you want everything to be in individual pieces.

Since we had sesame oil, that will help it separate quite easily, so you shouldn't be left with a big chunk of meat. And this only takes about 20 seconds or so, 10 to 20 seconds. And we're done, that's all. So here I'm going to pick them up and transfer them to a tray. And the idea, when we put them on this tray, we want to spread it. And the idea is to steam dry them while we prepare everything else. And so, when we are ready to sauté, the pork will be very dry. - So this is being velvety here. - Yes, then this is already velvety, then it would be what is called passing.

Basically you would just run it through the hot liquid. - As in life. - Yes. (soft music) - Okay, then we're ready to cook. So I'll have my ingredients here in the order that I'll add them to the pan. So I'm using chicken fat for cooking, but any type of oil will work. The recipe in the book calls for first sautéing the pork, raw, in a couple of batches. Because we are doing this velveting process, we don't have to do that step. Then it's already cooked. Now we are going to cook the other ingredients and then we will add the pork again at the end.

So when you cook in a wok, you should always heat it over high heat like this, until it starts to smoke. I mean, you're basically using it as a temperature gauge. So once it starts smoking, you know, you're over 500 degrees or so. And then depending on what you're cooking, you're going to lower the temperature. I'm going to turn this down a little bit. Some recipe will lower it a lot. But you lower it, you add fat, you stir it up. And then you basically want to start cooking right away. So I have my aromatics. Those are just to infuse flavor into the oil.

That will take about 15 seconds. And then I have my vegetables. So those are my cucumbers, my chives here. So you can see it's, yeah, it's a shootout and sometimes I drop some things. - You have to feel comfortable leaving... - The dog field. - Yes. - And now my meat will go back in. And finally, my sauce will go in. And when I add my sauce, what I'm going to do is add it around, so there's a couple of ways you can do that. , good? You can pour it right over the center or around the edges.

And when you pour it over the center, what happens is it basically stays raw. Somehow it drips slowly and slowly reduces. Whereas if you pour it over the sides, it hits the hot metal first, burning it and developing different flavors, so you want to hear that sizzle when you add the sauce. - It's almost like the pan is a steel drum when you use different parts to make different... - Different effects, exactly. So now we're just going to add about half of our cornstarch mixture to start, and this is just to thicken it to the right texture.

So what I'm looking for is to basically cover the ingredients in some sort of glossy sheen. So to me it still seems like there's too much sauce, I'll let it reduce a little bit and then add a little more thickener to it as well. Alright, that's the level of sauce I'm looking for. When I pull my spatula forward and a little trickle falls out, but it's not like swimming in it. (soft music) Spicy cucumbers, right? - I love spicy cucumbers, I never... You think, ugh, spicy cucumbers, but then you say, ooh, spicy cucumbers. - Yeah, and especially when you cook them, you sauté them like that, they get crispy in the middle, but they get a little bit of that kind of bright flavor on the outside. - Something that is very difficult to overcome when you are a new cook is that a lot of flavor, not all flavor, but a lot of flavor comes from heating things up. - Yes. - You can only do that if you fail properly. - Good. - You need everything chopped, you need everything in a bowl ready to pour.

Otherwise it's going to burn when... I mean, yeah, like with my garlic, chilies and ginger at the beginning, even in the 10 seconds I was talking, you could see it start to spin a little bit. If I had left it there literally three seconds longer, it would have burned. - So everything, you are unable to make this dish unless everything is ready to go in that pan when the heat kisses it. - Yeah, you don't want to have to move your, you want your hand to always be here, like, within reach. - This is what you want, friends.

You're cooking virtually any recipe at home, as long as you're starting out, make everything look like this. - Yes. - Measure it. Speaking of which... - Rock with your wok? - I want to eat, ugh. (both laugh) (soft electronic music)