Equipment: What You Need to Stir-Fry Like a Pro
The key to successful stir-frying is to have all of your ingredients ready before you even start cooking. When choosing your ingredients try to keep it simple, sometimes less is more. Once you’ve selected your ingredients, cut them into roughly equal sizes or shapes. This promotes even cooking. If you can, try to keep each type of vegetable separate. This is because when it’s time to cook, delicate ingredients like tomatoes will go in the pan at the end of the cooking process while robust ingredients like carrots will be added at the beginning.
While a carbon steel wok is the traditional tool of choice, don’t worry if you don’t have one. A large, wide frying pan or sauté pan with high sides can also work well. Make sure it’s sturdy enough to handle high heat.
Other essentials include:
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Long-handled spatula or wok turner
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Chopping board and sharp knife
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Mixing bowls for mise en place (ingredient prep)
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Tongs or cooking chopsticks (optional but helpful)
Step-by-Step: How to Stir-Fry Like a Chef
1. Prepare Everything Before You Start
Stir-frying moves quickly, so you won’t have time to chop or measure once you begin. Prepare:
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Proteins: chicken, tofu, beef, prawns, or tempeh
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Vegetables: capsicum, broccoli, carrots, snow peas, onions, etc.
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Aromatics: ginger, garlic, shallots, lemongrass
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Sauce: Mix your stir-fry sauce ahead (soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, chili paste, vinegar, etc.)
Pro Tip: Cut ingredients to uniform size to ensure even cooking. Keep delicate and firm vegetables separate.
2. Heat Your Wok Until It’s Smoking Hot
To make a good stir-fry, you must have an extremely hot wok or pan. Simple as that! Restaurants have extremely powerful stoves pumping out super-high heat, which enables them to get that iconic charred ‘wok flavour’ and is the reason food cooks so quickly.
Since we cannot produce the same heat as a Chinese restaurant at home, you need to heat your wok or pan for a long time. To test if it’s hot enough, you can flick a little water over the surface of the wok. If it evaporates the second it makes contact, you’re good to go! Once the wok is really hot, add some neutral oil such as vegetable, grape seed or sunflower oil (peanut oil works well too!). These oils have a high smoke point which hopefully won’t set the smoke alarm off as quickly as olive oil. Once you add your oil, work quickly. Stir-frying isn’t about taking it low and slow.
High heat is the secret to a great stir-fry. Restaurants achieve intense wok hei (wok breath) from gas flames. At home:
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Heat your wok dry for several minutes until it starts smoking lightly.
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Add high smoke point oil such as peanut, canola, rice bran, or grapeseed oil.
Avoid olive oil — it burns quickly and adds unwanted flavour.
3. Avoid Cold or Wet Ingredients
Adding cold meat or vegetables will instantly reduce the temperature of your wok or frypan. To avoid this, let the ingredients sit out at room temperature at least 20 minutes before cooking them. Then when you are ready to cook, ensure all your prepped food is drained properly. You can even go as far as patting meats dry with paper towel. Even slightly damp ingredients will alter temperature and sizzling sound that ingredients make in oil, causing your food to steam instead of sear.
If you add cold or damp food, it drops the wok’s temperature. This leads to steaming, not searing. Let meat and veggies come to room temperature (20–30 minutes out of the fridge) and pat them dry with paper towel before cooking.
4. Don’t Overcrowd the Pan
The most common mistake we make when stir-frying at home is adding too many ingredients into the wok at once. If you overfill your wok or pan, it cools everything down in the process. Your food will stew, not fry! You really want your food to sizzle, especially meats and harder vegetables. Also, if you dump all the ingredients into the pan at once, you’re not taking into account the different cooking rates of your food. For example, firm carrots need more time to cook than prawns or thin strips of chicken.
Overcrowding traps moisture and leads to soggy stir-fry. Instead:
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Cook in small batches, especially for meat and firm vegetables.
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Stir-frying is about layering — not dumping everything in at once.
5. Cook Meat and Seafood First
At home, you’ll want to stir fry in batches for even browning. First heat up the oil, then add aromatics like ginger or garlic, followed by your meat or other protein. Only add approximately 200-250g at a time and spread it out so it is not all piled up in the centre. Leave it for at least 30 seconds to give it a chance to sear, then stir until it’s browned nicely. Cook the meat until its almost done, remove the batch and set it aside. Reheat the pan or wok and add more oil if necessary, then repeat the process with any remaining protein. You don’t want to cook the meat all the way through because you’ll add it back to the wok at the end where it will finish cooking. Otherwise, everything will end up overcooked!
Cook your protein in batches to get nice caramelisation:
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Add aromatics (garlic/ginger) to hot oil
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Add 200–250g meat and spread it out
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Let it sear untouched for 30 seconds before stirring
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Remove from wok just before fully cooked
This preserves tenderness and prevents overcooking.
6. Vegetables Come Next
Once you have set aside your protein, heat up the wok again and add a little more oil so you can cook the vegetables. Using the same principles as the meat, you may need to do this in batches. Start off with sturdier veggies like onions or chunky mushrooms, leaving leafy greens, shredded cabbage or bean sprouts to the end to maintain their texture. Some items may need extra cooking time before stir-frying. You can blanch vegetables like broccoli in salted boiling water for 60 seconds and refresh in iced water to ensure they stay crisp. This is an extra step, but the aim with a wok is to cook quickly so that you don’t end up with a pool of liquid at the base.
Reheat the wok and add a splash more oil if needed. Then:
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Start with firmer vegetables like carrots, beans, or onions
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Add medium-soft veggies like mushrooms or zucchini next
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Add delicate greens (spinach, bok choy, bean sprouts) at the end
Chef’s Tip: For perfect broccoli or green beans, blanch them briefly in salted water, then refresh in cold water before stir-frying. This preserves colour, crunch and speeds up wok time.
7. Combine and Finish With Sauce
You Should add the cooked meat back to the wok at the end to finish cooking and combine with the other ingredients. At this point, you can add your seasonings and sauces. By making a ‘slurry’ from a tablespoon of corn starch and 60ml of cold water (forming a paste) and adding it into the stir-fry, will thicken your sauce and give that classic glossy look to your meal.
Return your cooked protein to the wok, toss everything together, then pour in your pre-mixed sauce. For that luscious, glossy finish:
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Stir in a slurry: 1 tbsp corn starch + 60 ml cold water
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Cook for another 1–2 minutes until the sauce thickens and clings to the food
Sauce Suggestions for Every Stir-Fry
Try these quick combinations:
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Classic Chinese: Soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, sugar, corn starch slurry
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Thai-Inspired: Fish sauce, lime juice, palm sugar, garlic, chili
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Vietnamese-style: Nuoc mam, rice vinegar, garlic, shallot, sugar
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Japanese-style: Miso paste, mirin, soy sauce, sesame seeds
Common Stir-Fry Mistakes to Avoid
🚫 Using olive oil or butter
🚫 Tossing everything in at once
🚫 Ignoring your wok temperature
🚫 Skipping ingredient prep
🚫 Leaving your stir-fry in the pan too long after cooking (it continues to cook!)
Stir-Frying Made Simple: Join a Cooking Class!
Want to master stir-frying and more? At Otao Kitchen, our hands-on Asian cooking classes teach you essential stir-fry techniques, knife skills, and flavour balancing. Whether you're keen on Thai, Chinese, or Vietnamese dishes, our chefs will guide you through cooking your own restaurant-quality meals at home.
Explore Our Stir-Fry and Asian Cooking Classes →
Bonus: Build a Stir-Fry Pantry
Keep these on hand to make stir-frying easy anytime:
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Soy sauce (light and dark)
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Oyster sauce
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Fish sauce
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Chili paste or sambal
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Sesame oil
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Corn starch
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Rice wine or vinegar
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Dried mushrooms or seaweed
Conclusion
Stir-frying is one of the easiest ways to make fast, delicious, and nutritious meals at home. With a bit of prep and practice, you’ll be able to whip up stir-fries better than your local takeaway — and have fun doing it!
Ready to level up your cooking? Join an Otao Kitchen class today and learn from the experts.
You Should add the cooked meat back to the wok at the end to finish cooking and combine with the other ingredients. At this point, you can add your seasonings and sauces. By making a ‘slurry’ from a tablespoon of corn starch and 60ml of cold water (forming a paste) and adding it into the stir-fry, will thicken your sauce and give that classic glossy look to your meal.
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