Stir Fry Seafood
- To ensure that your ingredients cook quickly and evenly, cut the seafood and whatever vegetables you will be cooking into even-sized pieces.
- Heat the oil in the wok or large slope-sided skillet over high heat. Add the vegetables first and cook very quickly, stirring constantly. When just tender, transfer to a bowl and set aside.
- If needed, add more oil to the pan and reheat. Add the seafood and cook, stirring, until lightly browned and opaque in the center, 1 to 5 minutes depending on the size of the pieces.
- Return the vegetables to the pan, add any sauce or seasoning and toss to evenly mix. Spoon the seafood, vegetables and sauce over rice.
Seafood for Stir-frying: Shrimp, Scallops, Squid, cubes or strips of firm fish (halibut, monkfish, salmon, swordfish, tuna, shark)
Technique tips: Stir-frying cooks small pieces of food in a pan over high heat. The food cooks very quickly, so you must stir almost constantly to cook evenly and to avoid sticking. It is important to choose firm seafood that will hold together when stirred and not fall apart
as it cooks. Also, avoid overheating the pan. or the food will release liquid and poach rather than fry; cooking in batches alleviates this.
A wok is ideal for stir-frying because it is deep and the evenly sloping sides make easy work of stirring the ingredients, but you can use a
large skillet instead. Because a variety of vegetables can be stir-fried with seafood, all you need is rice to make a complete meal.
