what the garlic . . .

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
I'm very inexperienced in asian cooking - that will become clear....

but now and then I wok. stir fry mostly. I don't recipe it - I wing it with lots of veggies and stuff. soy sauce/sesame oil,,, the usual candidates.

but here's my question:
many recipes/dishes start out with hot oil in the pan, add diced/minced garlic and cook til golden brown, add . . . x+y+z and cook until tender, flipping stirring and generally just wokking around....

and meanwhilt the garlic hast burnt itself to bitter.... it's _supposed_ to be a hot wok!

what am I missing?
 

medtran49

Well-known member
Gold Site Supporter
Do you have everything ready to go when you start cooking? That's a MUST. You should be able to start the cooking and not stop other than to drop new items in once you've started. Try pushing it up on the side instead of leaving it in the oil after you've done the initial quick cook to flavor the oil. After you've added some other things, the garlic can be mixed back in.
 

QSis

Grill Master
Staff member
Gold Site Supporter
My method is to NOT cook the garlic until golden brown, but just let it sizzle for maybe 30 seconds before adding more stuff.

Here's what a poster on the internet says.

"You have a few options, as you're dealing with high-heat cooking

  1. Only fry the garlic for a few seconds before adding something else to cool down the pan. You don't want it to cook 'til it shows color ... just a few seconds then toss in some onion or other high-moisture items.
  2. Add the garlic with something else (eg, ginger), to keep it from burning quite as quickly.
  3. Leave the garlic in larger bits, so it'll take longer to burn (as the moisture doesn't cook off immediately).
  4. Really crush the garlic well. Not chopped, but pulp it into a paste before using it, so it both holds together as a mass, and releases all of its moisture.
  5. Move the garlic to the edge of the wok after cooking it (use a wok scoop or rounded spatula to make sure you get it all) ... then add your next ingredients, but don't bring the garlic back down 'til plenty of other stuff is in the pan.
And of course, make sure that you've cut up everything before you add the garlic -- you're cooking over such high heat that you want to be able to quickly add other things, otherwise you risk cooking the garlic for too long while you're dealing with some other ingredient."

Lee
 

Sass Muffin

Coffee Queen ☕
Gold Site Supporter
If I'm not going to use any sauce in a stir fry, I do the onions first, then the garlic added to the pan and stir it around a little, remove those- add more oil to the pan to do the meats, peppers, carrots, broccoli..whatever.
Then I add the onions and garlic back to finish off.
If I'm using a bottled stir fry sauce, I add the garlic to that and allow the heat to pull the flavour. The sauce protects the garlic from burning and turning nasty.

Hope that makes sense.
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
yup - got everything sliced diced prepped lined up in the order of add...
I've tried the 'quick add something' routine - sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.
typically I go for the sizzle then scoop the garlic out before continuing. any meats you want to wok brown - except maybe shrimp - needs the a heat high enough to burn garlic.
my understanding is do the beef/chicken/pork first - also a flavor the pan thing - remove - then the veggies - then combine...
I just wanted to make sure I'm not missing some step that is so obvious it's never described in recipes . . .
 

Sass Muffin

Coffee Queen ☕
Gold Site Supporter
This from Jessica Gavin, culinary scientist.

Often ginger and garlic are added first to the hot oil before the proteins or veggies. I started adding them at the end of cooking so that they could still add incredible aromas to the stir-fry, but reduce the chance of burning of the delicate finely chopped ingredients. Burnt garlic can especially give a bitter flavor to the dish. Push the vegetables to the side and add aromatics to the center of the pan, stir-fry until fragrant but not browned, about 20 to 30 seconds.
https://www.jessicagavin.com/how-to-make-stir-fry/
 

ChowderMan

Pizza Chef
Super Site Supporter
indeed - it makes more sense to me - however so many recipe instructions start with the garlic....
 

Sass Muffin

Coffee Queen ☕
Gold Site Supporter
Here Chowder.
Along these lines.
https://thesaltymarshmallow.com/easy-garlic-pork-stir-fry/

20180816_182654.png
 
Top