A stir-fry and wok-work course: heat management, oil and pan choice, ingredient ordering, and how to chase wok hei on a home hob.
Once the wok is hot, the stir-fry is choreography. Six to ten ingredients hit the pan over 3-4 minutes, each at a different moment, each cooked for a different time. The skill is not in any one ingredient; it's in the sequence and the timing.
Stir-fry is the cooking method most often executed badly at home. The technique looks simple: heat a pan, add oil, throw stuff in, toss. But the result depends on three things most home cooks get wrong:
Wok hei is a Cantonese term that translates roughly to "the breath of the wok" or "the soul of the wok". It refers to the subtle smoky-toasty flavour that develops when food is stir-fried in a properly screaming-hot wok over an open flame. The flavour is partly Maillard browning (the same reaction that browns steak), partly caramelisation of sugars, partly tiny droplets of oil being vaporised on the wok surface and igniting briefly above the food.
Most home stir-fry failures start before any food hits the pan. The wrong pan won't get hot enough. The wrong oil burns before food caramelises. The wrong heat is too low to drive evaporation. This page covers the equipment choices and the heat-management techniques that make the difference between a sad sticky stir-fry and a proper one.