Post by Deleted on May 13, 2019 6:10:15 GMT
For that Cantonese Chow Mien taste you can mix some oyster sauce, sugar, a chicken stock cube and boiling water. While the chicken stock is dissolving, I always add some corn starch and whisk it in so the sauce thickens when I add it later. Not too much, but not too little. 2 tablespoons per cup should do the trick, and if you're doing a cup then you should also do 3 tablespoons of the oyster sauce and the sugar.
Separately, you can mix some oyster sauce, soy sauce, sriracha, Mirin (or failing that, something sweet). A pinch of ground clove would do great, and if you have that, then a pinch of ground cinnamon too. A little lemon juice is nice. The goal is to have it thicker so oyster sauce should be the dominant ingredient, then you spice it with sriracha ad use the soy sauce and the Mirin (or sugar) to adjust the potency of the sriracha within the oyster sauce. Then the cinnamon and clove (both of which are in Chinese 5-Spice) give it personality and the lemon juice rounds it all up. That's my thought process.
If you're doing chicken you could cut it in thin so it cooks fast, and marinate it with a little soy sauce, salt and pepper, corn starch. The corn starch searching the same purpose as a sauce thickener and if it coats the chicken a little then it soaks up more sauce when it fries.
I don't usually do rice, I do noodles. I always do the rice on the side, but if I were to choose to do rice instead of noodles in the stir-fry, I would put less of the first sauce so it does soak the noodles and start steaming, and I'd consider a tablespoon or so of peanut butter just to help. I'd use all of the second sauce, maybe even a greater quantity, and very little of the first sauce. Enough so that the rice isn't submerged.
Otherwise, if you're like me and you want noodles (frankly, I just use spaghetti cause it all looks the same in the sauce) then you get your most wok-like pot to as hot as you can and in quick succession: add oil, add ginger and garlic, chili flakes, add chicken, vegetables, tossing as much as you can so they fry and cook without releasing too much moisture, throw in the second sauce, then the noodles, then the first sauce, keep tossing and once the sauce thickens and everything's warmed through get it into a dish right away so it doesn't start becoming a soup. Bonus points if you warm up the plate with boiling water before putting the stir-fry in so it doesn't lose heat in the transfer.