Answer: While it's true you can stir-fry just about anything, certain cuts of meat or poultry are better suited for stir-frying. Here are tips on what types of meat, poultry, seafood and tofu work best in stir-fries, along with recipes:
Meat: When choosing meat for stir-frying, you want cuts that are both lean and tender. Flank steak, a long thin cut of meat from the belly muscles of the cow, is the most popular cut of meat for stir-frying. Because flank steak is quite tough it is cut across the grain â€" this relaxes the muscles fibers, making the meat more tender. Sirloin steak can also be used. Some chefs also recommend skirt steak â€" used to make Mexican fajitas - for stir-frying.
Pork: Use a lean cut of pork, such as
pork tenderloin. Another option is pork butt â€" it is lean, but with enough fat to add both moisture and flavor.
Chicken:
Chicken breasts work best in stir-fries: the white breast meat is lean, tender, and firm enough to hold up during stir-frying. Still, there are no hard and fast rules - many successful stir-fries have been made with chicken thighs.
Fish Use firm-fleshed fish that will keep its shape and not fall apart during stir-frying, such as
cod or halibut, sea bass or red snapper. (
Note: Fish is usually cooked by some other method, such as poaching in oil or steaming, before being combined with the other stir-fry ingredients near the end of cooking.
For shellfish, prawns and scallops (and lobster) can be stir-fried, but it’s important not to overcook them. One method of cooking prawns (shrimp) is to leave the shells on during stir-frying or deep-frying. This locks in flavor and helps keep the shrimp meat tender and not overcooked.
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