Though cooking a stir-fry dish takes minutes, there’s more to stir-fry techniques we use to recreate the plates for you.
In this article, we’re sharing your need-to-know tips to help you recreate mouth-watering stir-fry dishes (like pad Thai, shrimps, teriyaki, vegan stir-fry), and the ingredients you should prefer.
Here’s how to use the ingredients to formulate your Mongolian food bowl:
Limit the number of main ingredients to 3-5
This way, you avoid any mishmash and get a harmonious mix of flavors and textures. Before deciding on what to choose for your innovative Mongolian stir-fry, you must know each ingredient’s “job” in a dish.
A good stir-fry offers layered textures. Combine something soft like noodles or tofu, with something naturally sweet and crunchy like carrots, scallions, and finally, something with umami savoriness, like beef or chicken.
You can see this balance in some of our favorite dishes, Pineapple beef, and Vegan Stir-Fry.
The size and shape of each ingredient makes it delicious
Keep your health goals in mind when you are choosing the food ingredients so that we cook the right way to help you achieve your goals.
For instance, protein is essential if you are on a keto diet. When it comes to the medium spicy Mongolian protein, we may want thicker slices to ensure juiciness and tenderness, or julienned pieces to further distribute the meat in the dish.
You could add many gluten-free ingredients, low carbs such as Mongolian beef loaded with sugar, gluten, soy, and cornstarch.
If there are big vegetable pieces in the dish like broccoli or chunks of bell pepper, we will blanch them before you or par-cook them in the wok before adding them to the final.
That not only creates brilliant texture but also ensures everything is cooked firmly.
Consider the cooking time for each ingredient.
Just as you know the right shape and size of each ingredient to cook them all evenly, you must also know the approximate cooking time of each one.
More delicate vegetables, like bean sprouts, will cook within 30 seconds to a minute and do not require any pre-cooking.
Dense, drier vegetables like carrots and broccoli, however, need more cooking time.
For example, in one of our Mongolian dishes— “Curry Jerk Chicken on Rice,” the sliced chicken cooks very fast, making it necessary to blanch the zucchini first so the chicken and zucchini, are both at the perfect level of doneness.
When you think of combining chicken, or beef, you need to lay your eye on green beans, Bok Choy, Carrots, Bean Sprouts, and Asian Greens. You can take inspiration for the food ingredients, combining options over our chef’s dinner suggestions.
Decide whether or not to include sauce
Sauce or no sauce, this is a personal preference in Mongolian food. We personally prefer adding various flavored sauces— Cilantro Sauces: Mongolian Sause, Oyster Sause, Lemon juice creates a delicious seafood medley. You can make any Mongolian grilled food innovative with exquisite use of sausages and other toppings.
Aromatics
Aromatics like garlic and ginger or sesame seeds can’t be ignored, to cook the vegetables fast.
Stir-fry execution
If you want to go for your own creation, think about your approach to the stir-fry and have a plan in mind about the flavor you want. You are likely to choose related food ingredients so that we cook the desirable way for you. We will have all the ingredients cut, marinated, blanched, and drained, and position them at a reachable distance where they’re visible.
Even if you forget an ingredient or two after the dish is done, and the culprit is usually that the chopped scallions or bean sprouts, meant to be added at the end, weren’t within eyesight.
Plus, we offer another free dish of your choice.
Conclusion
At the Mongolian Grill West, we believe always eat your stir-fry when it’s just come out of the wok when it’s freshest, tastiest, and most delicious. Let’s make your favorite bowl for you.