Basic simple stir fry

I often make a simple and fast stir fry for the family, just as it is fresh nice and fast. If I am really busy I even just use a package of soup vegetables or ready to go stir fry greens. It will be good, if you take in mind not to have the greens steam or fry for too long. The meat should be nice and tender, having great taste. Now, you can make a good stir fry with almost any meat or poultry, but this time I will use pork.

I am not Martha Steward or something like that, but I do want to point out that if you want to take down the price of your meal, buy meat in big. I do that as often as I can, cleaning the meat myself, with a good knife. I can tell you that I earned back my first pro knife in weeks buying bigger cuts and making them smaller myself. Buying meat in big often costs 1/3^rd of pre-cut meat. If you buy stir fry cut here which always turns chewy, 400 grams will be around 4 euro, uncut per Kg about 3,50. So here I have this Kg of pork back, and trim the excess fat and sinew from the meat and cut it to thin slices. To start with the meat looks like cat food. If you slice it like this, the meat will be chewy like gum, so start taking out the big good parts. With a good sharp knife it’ll glide past the sinew by its own almost. You will be used to this in no time, and you will get the hard parts from the meat, even the little parts.

If you have taken out the sinew and fat like this, your meat will be lovely and tender, but the stir fry might taste a bit too lean.

You need:

A ready to go Stir fry vegetables mix or

100 grams green beans

100 grams carrot

100 grams red onion

100 grams of leek

400 grams pork back or shoulder

50 grams of smoked pork belly

1-3 chillies depending on your taste and the heat of the chilli

1 clove of garlic

1 tablespoon of oil

A curl of butter

So get some smoked pork belly, and use about 50 grams with the total of the dish. This will make your dish taste rich, even fatty like, without having a lot of fat.

Marinade the meat with a teaspoon of Cumin seeds and ground them yourself in a mortar, the taste will be better and again it will be loads cheaper. Then ground a teaspoon of Coriander seeds with the mortar, and add it to the meat. Fresh ground Coriander seeds with have some sweet and heat that processed powder is lacking off. Add some Paprika powder or sweet bell pepper powder, some salt, and a tablespoon of peanut oil. The oil will keep the meat from drying out. I added a good Korean pepper paste here, as it adds a lovely taste. Stir it a bit to get the herbs, meat and oil all mixed nicely, then leave it for at least 20 minutes, or marinade it the day before, if it gets more time the taste will be better.

Then chop a clove of garlic, a nice chilli taking out the seed lists to keep the heat down a bit if it has more heat than taste.

Chop your greens to 5 mm or 7 mm slices, keeping them the same width, this will make the cooking the same for all greens. The green beans can be a bit longer like 20 or 30 mm.

Start to fry the pork belly pieces in oil, when they start to sweat add the chilli. If you put in the chilli that early, it’ll loose some heat but no taste. Then add the garlic and put in your marinated meat and add the curl of butter, this will make the meat brown much faster. If the meat starts to colour add the greens on top with a little salt, the salt will make your greens start to lose some moisture. Give it a stir and put on a lid for about 5 minutes. Finish off with a good dash of soy if you like; this will make it look duller though.

Enjoy your meal!

Yours sincerely,

Bart J. Meijer