Stir-frying is an indispensable cooking technique because nearly any ingredient can be stir-fried. Once learned, stir-frying will provide you with the flexibility to build any dish to suit your tastes whether you’re craving black bean flavors, sweet and sour, ginger and garlic, or flavors such as lemongrass and chilies.

With stir-frying, you can take any ingredient and transform it into a delicious meal, whether you use tofu, noodles, or vegetables. And because stir-fries highlight the use of vegetables, it is a great cooking method that caters to all menus.

In this lesson, you will learn about the five main components of a stir-fry and how to properly prepare these ingredients prior to cooking. You will learn about a technique known as velveting, as well as many other valuable tips for successful stir-frying so you can avoid those soggy and disappointing dishes. Finally, you will learn a very common sequence used to properly and quickly stir-fry a dish over very high heat.

Once you watch this lesson, we have linked a recipe in the tip so that you can give stir-frying an informed try. We suggest starting out practicing this technique for a small serving (maybe just you or a guest) and not trying to cook for 4 of more people. If you have a partner, you can practice a second time for them. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat! Expect a few failures, particularly if you’re still seasoning your wok, but practicing will get you closer to mastering this technique and lovin’ Swich even more (we hope).