Despite embarking on the journey of curating a collection of recipes, I don’t do much recipe cooking in real life. Don’t get me wrong–I love recipes. I enjoy reading them and have a number of go-to’s in my back pocket at all times, but after the first cook-through, I tend to think of recipes as inspiration and templates. After a few iterations of a recipe, I start to break it down into its constituent parts, and ingredients become abstractions and variables. Each ingredient or group of ingredients serves a function, and that function is more important than the ingredient itself.
I think of this mental model as “formula cooking,” and formula cooking is something a lot of experienced cooks likely do instinctively. Being able to think in terms of formulas offers a lot of flexibility, which is powerful when you’re staring down the contents of your fridge after a long week or when you’re wandering the grocery store without a plan of what you’re making for dinners that week. Formula cooking enables you to make quick substitutions on the fly, which certainly helps when you’re standing in the produce section wondering why a tiny head of cauliflower costs seven dollars. Put down the cauliflower. You can get something else (ideally something on sale) that serves the same function.
The Formula of Stir-fried Vegetables
I am someone who needs a green vegetable served with every meal. Now, sometimes the “main” in my dinner is a one-pot wonder that provides a protein, a carb, and a substantial green vegetable component, but it happens more often that the vegetable component in a main does not satisfy my need for greens. I need to add a side, and one of the easiest ways to do that is to make a dish of stir-fried vegetables with garlic. Stir-fried vegetables with garlic is not really a recipe in my mind. It is a formula, a structure that is highly adaptable to what you have in the fridge and pantry: almost any vegetable and any aromatic will work.
I use the term “stir-fry” very loosely here. Technically speaking, the term “stir-fry” implies high heat. Sometimes I stir-fry, but usually, I’m just sautéing over medium heat and steaming to completion, which is a very common home cooking technique that yields tasty results without coating your kitchen cabinets in polymerized oil particles.
Components
- One vegetable (ideally green if you’re me, but most vegetables will work)
- Garlic (or a stand-in for garlic from the allium family, such as onion or shallot)
- A fat, such as oil
- Water (or fancy water, such as stock)
- Salt
Process
- Prep your vegetable component by cutting into even, bite-size pieces. Evenly sized pieces cook through, well, more evenly. They’ll all finish cooking at the same time.
- Prep your garlic by giving it a mince or a rough chop. Smaller pieces will release more garlic flavour, which is good to know if you’re somehow down to your last clove of garlic and need to stretch it to make dinner. It’s also helpful to understand this if you’re not quite sure how you feel about garlic and maybe just want a whisper of garlic flavour.
- Begin by briefly sautéing garlic in oil until aromatic. Normally, I do this over medium heat. This shouldn’t take long (30 seconds), and if you did mince your garlic, you’ll want to watch it carefully as garlic burns easily in an empty pan.
- Add your vegetable, along with some salt, and mix it up so that everything is coated in the garlicky oil. Add a splash of water (or stock if you’ve got it), and cover the pan so that everything can steam, a few minutes depending on what vegetable you’re using and how big your pieces are.
- When the vegetables are tender, turn off the heat and taste for seasoning. Serve.
Analysis
Let’s start by looking at the components of this dish and understanding what role each plays:
Vegetable: The vegetable is the main component of the dish. Pick your favourite veggie. Generally the cooking process is the same regardless of which vegetable you choose*, but the exact timing will vary.
* Unless you choose fiddleheads. You’ll want to boil those first. Look up fiddlehead food safety.
Garlic: The garlic is the primary flavour component here. You will want to use fresh garlic, not garlic powder. If you’re a jarlic person, leave that’ll probably work, as well. If you don’t have garlic in any form, then pull from its family: onion, shallot, and the white parts of scallions.
Fat: You will need a small (like a tablespoon) amount of fat to get the aromatics going. A neutral oil like canola will work fine. You could also use an extra virgin olive oil, but you’ll definitely want to stay around medium heat if using a good olive oil to preserve the most flavour. You could also use lard (or bacon fat or duck fat), home-made if you have it (and you’re not vegan), which would definitely take your stir-fried vegetables to the next level.
Water: The primary purpose of the water is to generate steam, which will cook your veggies evenly. You only need a splash, and if you use something like stock, it will also serve as a flavouring agent.
Salt: It’s salt. Not much to be said here.
Can I Use…
Vegetable X? Yes! Pretty much any vegetable will work. My favourite candidates for this application include broccoli, green beans, kale, bok choy, Chinese broccoli, and garlic scapes.
Even leafy greens? Yes! I personally prefer hardier greens that can stand up to a bit of cooking, such as bok choy, kale, Chinese broccoli, or collards, but spinach works great as well. In fact, stir-fried lettuce is a thing. Not a thing I do, but it is a thing.
More than one type of vegetable? Yes! But you’ll want to be aware that different vegetables have different cooking times. To ensure everything finishes at around the same time, you can choose veggies that have similar cooking times or do one of the following:
- Be strategic with your timing. Add longer-cooking vegetables to the pan first to give them a head start, followed by shorter-cooking veggies in sequence.
- Par-cook all vegetables by giving them a quick blanch first. This way, all vegetables are already cooked to about 95% doneness before they go into the garlic-flavoured oil. If you do this, you won’t need much, if any, steam time.
Most of the time, I follow method 1, but if I happen to have a pot of water boiling for some other reason anyway, then method 2 yields great results.
Butter instead of oil? Yes, add the butter to the pan and let the foaming subside before adding your garlic. Butter burns, so you’ll want to monitor your heat more closely. Using butter will lend a richer, creamier note to the finished product.
Other seasonings and mixins? Of course. You could theoretically do anything, but here are some ideas:
- Infuse the oil with some chili pepper flakes at the beginning.
- Infuse the oil with some bits of bacon or salami or chorizo.
- Add freshly ground black pepper or white pepper to finish.
- Add a light drizzle of toasted sesame oil to finish, particularly if you’re using Asian greens.
- Finish with grated Parmesan, especially if you’re using broccoli and especially if you pair it with chilli flakes.