One of those quick and simple weekday meals is stir-fry, which is frequently prepared with whatever leftover vegetables, proteins, and ingredients are in your refrigerator. To strengthen your stir fry and turn it into a full meal, you may also add nourishing carbohydrates like rice or noodles. However, a stir fry cannot exist without the ideal stir fry sauce. The convenient option for stir-fry sauces is to buy pre-packaged sauces from the international section of the supermarket. However, these sauces can be rich in added sugar and sodium, as well as being flavourless, if you read the ingredient list. Instead, you may put together a few of your preferred ingredients and flavours from your spice rack and pantry to create the ideal, one-of-a-kind flavour combination for your stir fry.
Miso Paste
The salty spread you've been missing is miso paste. Cooked soybeans, salt, and a mould culture known as koji are the basic components of miso. You can use any of the three varieties of miso in your stir-fry recipe. Shiro, or white miso, is prepared from white rice and barley koji. It has the least salt of all the miso varieties and has a mildly sweet flavour. Red miso has a richer, saltier flavour and is prepared from rice, soybeans, or barley. It is significantly darker in colour. Yellow miso contains overtly acidic flavours with some undertones of sweetness.
Almond butter or peanut butter
The fatty and viscous ingredients in stir-fry sauce include peanut and almond butter. To help counteract some of the salinity and heat from the other components in your stir-fry, you should add a tablespoon of your favourite creamy nut butter. If you thin out the sauce with water and add aromatics like ginger, garlic, and chilli sauce, you can create a hot peanut sauce that is ideal for crisp vegetables like snap peas and cabbage.
Sesame Oil
Sesame oil, which is used to flavour food, is a tasty, nutty, and aromatic oil. Sesame oil that has not been roasted has a high smoke point of 410 degrees Fahrenheit and a generally bland flavour with hints of nuttiness. In place of vegetable or canola oil, you can stir-fry your proteins and vegetables with untoasted sesame oil. Sesame oil that has been toasted smokes at low temperatures, thus it should only be used for flavouring and low-heat cooking. The colour of toasted sesame oil is a dark amber, which makes it easy to identify, and the flavour is much stronger.
Lime Juice
Never undervalue the impact of fresh acid in the sauce for your stir-fry. Lime juice is our preferred citrus for stir-frying. The lime's organic undertone and unique tartness work well to counteract the sweetness and saltiness of the other ingredients. For a flavorful chicken stir fry in the satay style, we advise combining lime with honey, peanut butter, and soy sauce. To add more citrus flavour to your dish, you may also add a little lime juice and zest to a side of white rice.
Peanut Oil
Around the world, cuisines use peanut oil because it is so adaptable. Refined peanut oil is a good oil to use for stir-frying because of its complex flavour and high smoke point. On the other hand, green peanut oil, which is produced by pressing fresh peanuts, has a waxier flavour. In terms of cooking, peanut oil is comparable to extra virgin olive oil. Try to avoid heating green peanut oil to a temperature that is too high if you want to use it in your stir-fry sauce.
Soy Sauce
Different flavours are grouped under the soy sauce umbrella. Soy sauce comes in a variety of flavours, including the popular shoyu (or soy sauce) from Japan, which is frequently marketed as "Kikkoman" and contains wheat. When used in moderation with other sweet, tart, and umami-rich ingredients, Japanese soy sauce provides the right, dark, salty flavour for stir-frying.
Cornstarch
An essential component of a stir fry is cornflour, not because it adds flavour but rather because it can thicken up a dish if you use too many weak sauces. When heat is applied, the starch absorbs the water at the molecular level, thickening the sauce. Make a slurry by mixing cornflour and water in a ratio of 1 to 2 if you want to add cornflour to your stir-fry sauce. All-purpose flour, arrowroot starch, or xanthan gum are suitable alternatives for cornflour if you don't have any on hand.
Minced Garlic
Because it packs a powerful flavour, minced garlic is frequently boiled down along with the other ingredients in stir-fries. However, chopping your garlic extremely small and not cooking it can give your stir-fry sauce an unexpected kick of heat. Whatever stir-fried vegetables you still have in your fridge go great with fresh garlic; our particular favourites are carrots, green onions, and mushrooms. If a garlic press is not available, you can mince the cloves by pressing them with a fork until they are sufficiently broken up.
Brown Sugar
Numerous pre-packaged stir fry sauces will include either dark brown sugar or light brown sugar on their labels. Because it contains more molasses during production, dark brown sugar has a stronger caramel flavour. Since light brown sugar or plain white sugar lack richness, we prefer to add a little bit of brown sugar to our stir fry sauce.
Honey or Maple Syrup
You can use honey or maple syrup for brown sugar if you don't want to worry about blending it into oblivion. Honey has intricate chemical elements that do more than just sweeten the stir fry; they also change the flavour. Additionally, due to its low moisture content and thick texture, it can absorb more of the tastes of the cooking proteins. Soy sauce and a smidge of liquid smoke go well with the oaky undertones in maple syrup.