One of my sons used to groan when home­made stir-fry was on our din­ner menu. After all, Asian cook­ing is not in our culi­nary genes, except to order in a Chi­nese restau­rant. But two things helped turn him around – his non-Chi­nese nutri­tion pro­fes­sor at Cor­nell, who cooked a stir-fry in the lec­ture hall that looked and smelled a lot like ours, and … corn­starch. Adding a lit­tle corn­starch gives home­made stir-fry  the same shine and tex­ture as you get in restau­rants. When we’re short on time for chop­ping fresh veg­eta­bles, we love using the frozen stir-fry veg­gie assort­ment from Cost­co. And exper­i­ment with dif­fer­ent scratch and pack­aged sauces to find the ones that you like best.

Here’s what you need to make Cook­ing by Num­ber stir-fry to serve four:
4 cups cut-up veg­eta­bles (or more) 1‑inch piece fresh gin­ger, fine­ly chopped
3 tea­spoons oil (I like to use peanut)
2 gar­lic cloves, fine­ly chopped
1 pound pro­tein
1/2 cup sauce, reduced sodi­um if avail­able
2 tea­spoons corn­starch, stirred into 2 table­spoons water

Here are some ingre­di­ent ideas to get you start­ed. Mix and match to cre­ate your own com­bos.
Veg­eta­bles – Fresh, pre-cut, or frozen broc­coli, car­rots, green beans, snow peas, Asian greens, napa cab­bage, Asian veg­gie mix
Pro­tein – Skin­less chick­en breast or thigh chunks, lean beef cubes, shrimp, salmon chunks, lean pork strips, firm or extra firm tofu
Sauce – Teriya­ki, stir-fry, gar­lic, peanut, or make your own with 1 tea­spoon sesame oil, 2 table­spoons rice vine­gar, 3 table­spoons soy sauce, and 4 table­spoons broth

Now that you’ve picked out ingre­di­ents, here’s what you do with them:

  1. Place the veg­eta­bles and 2 table­spoons water in a microwave­able bowl. Cov­er and microwave on high for two min­utes.
  2. Heat a wok or large skil­let on medi­um heat. Add the gin­ger, gar­lic, and oil and stir-fry for 30 sec­onds. Add the veg­eta­bles and stir-fry for 5 min­utes, adding a cou­ple of table­spoons of water or broth if need­ed to keep the veg­eta­bles moist. Add the pro­tein and stir-fry for 6 min­utes or until almost ful­ly cooked.
  3. Stir in the sauce, reduce the heat to medi­um-low, and sim­mer for 2 min­utes to heat the sauce. Stir in the corn­starch mix­ture and sim­mer for 1 minute or until the sauce thick­ens.
  4. Serve over rice – we like brown or mul­ti-grain rice – or pas­ta.