Stir frying
[4] Stir frying has been recommended as a healthy and appealing method of preparing vegetables, meats, and fish, provided calories are kept at a reasonable level.
[7][8] The Chinese character 炒 is attested in inscriptions on bronze vessels from the Eastern Zhou period (771–256 BC), but not in the sense of stir frying.
[1] Although there are no surviving records of Han dynasty stir frying, archaeological evidence of woks and the tendency to slice food thinly indicate that the technique was likely used for cooking.
[10] The term initially appears in the sense of "stir frying" in the Qimin Yaoshu (齊民要術), a sixth-century agricultural manual, including in a recipe for scrambled eggs.
[13] "The increasingly commercial nature of city life" in the late Ming and Qing (1644–1912) periods also favored speedy methods.
The book told the reader: Roughly speaking, ch'ao may be defined as a big-fire-shallow-fat-continual-stirring-quick-frying of cut-up material with wet seasoning.
Both techniques use high heat, but chao adds a liquid and the ingredients are softer, whereas bao stir fries are more crispy because of the Maillard reaction.
The seasonings are tossed with a spatula until they are fragrant, then other ingredients are added, beginning with the ones taking the longest to cook, such as meat or tofu.
When the meat and vegetables are nearly cooked, combinations of soy sauce, vinegar, wine, salt, or sugar may be added, along with thickeners such as cornstarch, water chestnut flour, or arrowroot.
The phrase "breath of a wok" is a poetic translation Grace Young first coined in her cookbook The Wisdom of the Chinese Kitchen.
[citation needed] In practical terms, the flavour imparted by chemical compounds results from caramelization, Maillard reactions, and the partial combustion of oil that come from charring and searing of the food at very high heat in excess of 200 °C (392 °F).
[27] Because of the high heat, bao is ideal for small amounts of food that cook quickly, so the juices do not flow out of the items.
Boiling and steaming decreased the amount of protein, soluble sugar, ash, and total free amino acids by more than one-third.
Taking into consideration the total retention of nutrients, the study concluded that stir frying is the method best suited for bamboo shoots.
The study found that the two most common methods of home cooking in China, stir-frying and stir-frying combined with deep frying in soybean oil, resulted in a much greater loss of chlorophyll, soluble protein, soluble sugar and vitamin C. The method which affected these values the least was steaming.
Recent studies show that heterocyclic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons are formed by stir frying meat at very high temperatures.
Stir frying a medical herb with honey is commonly used to increase its sweetness and therefore its spleen and stomach qi tonic effects.
