Stir Fry Sauce

 

Making a stir fry can be tricky, because when making one, you don't really use a recipe. Mixing in the meat, vegetables, and noodles are the easy part, but it becomes complicated when adding the sauce. It's usually just guessing how much sweet and how much sour is needed to balance the flavor; not to mention how much thickness in the sauce is needed. This sauce recipe makes it a lot easier now. It has enough sweet, sour, spice, and thickness into the sauce so you really don't need to add any other seasonings to your stir fry.

 

 

 

 

Making the stir fry sauce:

First, just take equal parts cooking oil (such as peanut, vegetable, or canola oil) and sesame oil. Heat it up over medium-high heat. Cooking oil has a bit of a neutral taste, but sesame seed will definitely add flavor to this sauce.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once the oil is heated, add the garlic and ginger. Make sure they are grated are because it will blend better into the finished sauce making it smooth. Just sauté for roughly 30 seconds to bring out the flavors.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add the lime juice, orange juice, pineapple juice, apple juice, chicken broth, rice vinegar, peanut butter, brown sugar, honey, soy sauce, ketchup and sriracha sauce, but not the cornstarch and water.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, whisk it and heat it until bubbling; you want the peanut butter to melt into the sauce.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Here it is, heated up, but it is not quite thick enough to coat your food.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Just add a little bit of cornstarch mixed with water. Not much is needed because the peanut butter is already thick.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Let come to a slight boil again till it become thick enough to coat a utensil such as a spoon (you can put it in a container and refrigerate it if you don't want to use it now, just make sure to let it cool slightly).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now that the sauce it done, why not make a stir fry? We're not really measuring out anything for this; we're just showing you the steps in making a stir fry and you can measure out the amount you prefer. First, heat a wok over medium high heat with some cooking oil, then add the meat of your choice. We used shrimp, but any meat will do; just make sure it is thoroughly cooked. Once cooked, place the meat in a separate bowl to add back later. If you don't want meat in your stir fry, just oil the pan and skip to the next step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, add all of the vegetables to your heart's content (you can add a little bit more oil to the pan if there is not enough to keep it from sticking). Some of the contents in ours were squash, carrots, beansprouts, mushrooms, bamboo shoots and baby corn to name a few. We recommend filling the bowl that you choose to eat out of and pour it into the heated pan. Toss around and cook until they become tender.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's time to add the noodles. We have also added rice to our stir fries in the past; just make sure that they are cooked before adding. Toss a little again. If you want just vegetables, skip to the next step.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, we add that wonderful sauce! We added about a ladle full or so; It's so much easier to make a stir fry with this sauce, because without it, you had to guess how much of what to put in to balance the sweet, sour, spiciness, and thickness of the sauce. This sauce is perfect! Toss to coat everything.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Add the cooked meat back to the pan and toss again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Not much else to do, but now is the ideal time to add other mix-ins such as peanuts. Toss again for the final time.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Now, it is done! Just pour your hot, delicious stir fry into the bowl that you had for your veggies.

 

 

 

 

 

 

As you can see, this sauce combines many different flavors from many different sauces to create an ideal sauce that you can use for every stir fry you eat. It saves the effort of trial and error when adding ingredients to your stir fry so you can have the same great balance of taste each and every time. Despite this being a stir fry sauce, It is also wonderful as a basting sauce for grilled skewers.

 

 

 

 

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