A question about stir frying garlic

Can never do stir fry like the pros anyway. You just cant maintain the heat on a home hub. So its all a bit of a compromise. One day, ilk have at least a five burner with a central fkame thrower for sirfry.
 
The 5-ring hobs with the special wok burner make a huge difference. It's not super-heated like the propane or wood fired oriental ones but I'd guess it's at least twice the output of a normal large burner.

We have one and it is too hot for nearly every other type of cooking except stir fry or griddling steaks :D
 
Trying to do stir fry on the worlds worst electric hob almost brings me to tears every time, there's just no way to keep the wok even close to hot enough. I never thought a gas hob would end up so high on the need list next time I rent.
 
Flavors the oil. It will go bitter if browned but it isn't a huge issue in asian cuisine, works ok.

Must be a medium low heat to get a sweet garlic flavour, and slightly more will give best of both.

It's like anything, you cook onions slowly they go incredibly sweet, you cook onions fast they go more bitter.
 
FrenchTart said:
Your reasoning is just that you've heard it's great so it must be.

Understanding *why* you should do or not do something is the key to actually being a good cook and not just someone that follows a recipe from the BBC website.
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Really? Is that my reasoning. Read post #4. I told you the reason.

It flavours the oil and infuses the whole dish from the beginning, the same reason you begin dishes with sweating an onion.

I'm well aware of the importance of understanding what's going on and why it's happening.
 
If I'm making a very quick stir fry is sometimes just cut the garlic and ginger roughly and fry until they start to brown,then remove and discard

Like said they will infuse the oil from the start

You can also do a batch of oil and keep it stored for future use
 
Buchanan0204 said:
Really? Is that my reasoning. Read post #4. I told you the reason.

It flavours the oil and infuses the whole dish from the beginning, the same reason you begin dishes with sweating an onion.

I'm well aware of the importance of understanding what's going on and why it's happening.
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Infusing the oil from the start is a pretty rubbish reason too. What do you think happens to the garlic flavours/aromas when you add them later on? They are infused into the dish.

For things other than garlic I can see how it might be better to infuse the oil, remove the ingredients you have used for infusing, then use the oil to cook with (as many of the recipes online that do this early addition suggest) but garlic is extremely strongly flavoured and pungent. There will be little or no benefit to adding it early whereas adding it later you get the benefit of not potentially burning the garlic.

You seem to have a bit of a chip on your shoulder about this. Apologies for daring to question an assumption that you don't seem to be able to back up with a solid reasoning for.

JBuk said:
If I'm making a very quick stir fry is sometimes just cut the garlic and ginger roughly and fry until they start to brown,then remove and discard

Like said they will infuse the oil from the start

You can also do a batch of oil and keep it stored for future use
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Batch infusing oil to store and then use at a later date makes perfect sense, agreed.

Unless people really hate eating garlic and ginger bits then I don't get the logic of adding it early, removing it and then throwing those away. Why not add them later, let them do their flavouring/aromatics stuff and keep them in the dish?
 
FrenchTart said:
Your reasoning is just that you've heard it's great so it must be.

Understanding *why* you should do or not do something is the key to actually being a good cook and not just someone that follows a recipe from the BBC website or something.

Not to mention that tradition isn't always the way to get the best results. I'm not a huge fan of Heston but he has certainly proven that there are lots of avenues to explore with food that aren't steeped in tradition.

Anyhow, really doing it this time - bed time ;)
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It's to do with making the base flavour with the garlic, ginger and oil. It's the same with Indian cooking, most curries start with you frying garlic, finely chopped onions, garlic and ginger with garam masala, which gets that traditional Indian base going, and the smell is just great from simmering that mixture.

I can understand where you're coming from though, there's no point in taking advice until you understand the reasons behind it. I got my info from a traditional Indian cook book called something like the secret to that curry taste. It's an ebook I bought a little while back which has got some really interesting recipes and explains why you're doing what you're being told to do.

As you know, I don't like taking advice without a good and thorough explanation behind it, and unfortunately asking for an explanation seems to rile people up for some reason. But you can just don't learn if you're blindly following information people are giving out.

Here's a link to it just in case you're interested in reading it
 
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spoffle said:
It's to do with making the base flavour with the garlic, ginger and oil. It's the same with Indian cooking, most curries start with you frying garlic, finely chopped onions, garlic and ginger with garam masala, which gets that traditional Indian base going, and the smell is just great from simmering that mixture.
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A curry is a completely different dish as you (as you said) simmer it and you're creating a base. I don't believe that in the 2 minutes of frying at high temperature the garlic flavours will penetrate into the meat/vegetables.

I understand that it is traditional and I understand that there's a desire to infuse the oil with flavours/aromatics but personally I see a huge disconnect between tradition and logic in this one case. It just doesn't make sense to me at all.

I'd love to see someone having done some side-by-side comparisons. That would shut me up quick enough :p

spoffle said:
edit: I can understand where you're coming from though, there's no point in taking advice until you understand the reasons behind it. I got my info from a traditional Indian cook book called something like the secret to that curry taste. It's an ebook I bought a little while back which has got some really interesting recipes and explains why you're doing what you're being told to do.

As you know, I don't like taking advice without a good and thorough explanation behind it, and unfortunately asking for an explanation seems to rile people up for some reason. But you can just don't learn if you're blindly following information people are giving out.
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Sorry... I jumped the gun on my reply :p

Agreed with all of this.
 
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I'm struggling to paste the link on my phone, have a Google for curry2go :p

Oh also my mum's friend has a noodle bar, I'll ask them about it.

I don't think the oil penetrates the meat myself either though, I'm pretty sure a lot of proper Chinese cooking uses pre cooked and flavoured meat that they quickly throw in to a stir fry just to heat it up.
 
I have a wok burner. It helps and I can get a decent stir fry from it, but as Glaucus says, it doesn't reach the intensity of the hob in a chinese restaurant.

My list of lottery win wants includes a massive kitchen with a proper hob for stir frying, a tandoor oven, a pizza oven and one of those big chargrill things the kebab houses use.

Oh, and two of those ovens that James Martin uses on Saturday Kitchen. They're supposed to be the nuts.
 
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FrenchTart said:
A curry is a completely different dish as you (as you said) simmer it and you're creating a base. I don't believe that in the 2 minutes of frying at high temperature the garlic flavours will penetrate into the meat/vegetables.

I understand that it is traditional and I understand that there's a desire to infuse the oil with flavours/aromatics but personally I see a huge disconnect between tradition and logic in this one case. It just doesn't make sense to me at all.

I'd love to see someone having done some side-by-side comparisons. That would shut me up quick enough :p



Sorry... I jumped the gun on my reply :p

Agreed with all of this.
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When you fry the aromatics first you infuse the oil which the other ingredients will soak up and get coated in and this adds flavour , if you do this afterwards or during ,a lot of the oil will get soaked up by the ingredients and the garlic /ginger won't cook quite the same although it will add something.

The only way to find out is to try it yourself , I have tried a few ways of making stirfrys and I think infusing the oil first gives the best results although other methods are still tasty
 
JBuk said:
When you fry the aromatics first you infuse the oil which the other ingredients will soak up and get coated in and this adds flavour , if you do this afterwards or during ,a lot of the oil will get soaked up by the ingredients and the garlic /ginger won't cook quite the same although it will add something.

The only way to find out is to try it yourself , I have tried a few ways of making stirfrys and I think infusing the oil first gives the best results although other methods are still tasty
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Yeah. My housemate suggested something like this as a reason yesterday. It makes sense. I didn't want to help Buchanan out though if he didn't have a good reasoning behind his ranting.
 
I think it's quite obvious that FrenchTart was pointing out that generally we are taught not to fry garlic early on as it burns easily rendering it bitter - anyone that has done some classical cooking will learn this fairly early on.

However, it's clear that the Asian cooks have perfected a way of flavouring the oils whilst cooking garlic early without burning - which I think Buchanan was trying to point out in an overly and unnecessarily aggressive way (which Mr Buchanan0204, you may want to address before posting again).
 
Yeah, fair points.

Though I will test it I'm still (not so) secretly convinced that adding garlic later would work better for me - more variation in flavours (i.e. smaller pockets of more intense garlic flavour), less hassle (removing garlic from the oil is tedious) and presumably eating the actual garlic rather than just the extracted flavours/aromas is in some way good for you :p
 
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