• Broiling
• Grilling
• Roasting & Braising
• Sautéing
• Stir Frying

As far as techniques go, stir frying is the Asian sister to sautéing with two exceptions: the type of cooking utensil used—a wok versus a frying pan—and the size of the food cooked—portion-sized for sautéing and bite-sized for stir frying. It’s definitely a technique custom made for the concentrated, controlled heat that a gas stove can deliver.

In making a stir fry recipe, you’ll spend more time cutting and chopping than you will cooking. The cooking part happens so fast, you don’t have time to do any prep work once you start. Stir frying demands that your ingredients are all mise en place prior to turning on a burner. Mise en place (MEEZ ahn plahs) is French for having all ingredients ready and placed in separate bowls or piles that you can easily get to once you start cooking. TV chefs do it all the time (or someone does it for them).

So make sure your meat and vegetables are all cut to about the same size and placed in bowls in the order in which they will be cooked. To make it easier to cut the meat, put it in the freezer for 30 minutes or so to firm it up. Also measure out the spices and sauce ingredients and have them handy as well.

When you’re sure all the ingredients are ready, heat the wok on medium high heat until the surface begins to smoke. You want it hot. Then pour cold oil into the wok and swirl it around to evenly coat the surface. Use oil with a high smoke point like peanut oil. Corn oil and canola will work as well, but peanut oil is best. Never add the oil to a cold wok and then heat it up. Putting cold oil into a hot wok helps prevent the food from sticking and the oil from burning.

It's a good technique to use when you want to really impress people. Make sure the salad or soup is on the table; top off everyone's drink; and then invite your guests (keep it to no more than three dinner guests or you'll be doing your cooking in too many batches) into the kitchen as you prepare the main course.

After the oil, the first thing to add is the aromatics—spices like ginger, garlic, onions or cumin seeds. As soon as they can be smelled—probably in 30 seconds or less—in goes the meat. Don’t put more than about a cup of meat in at a time. Keep stirring the meat and moving it around the wok, and as soon as begins to brown, remove it to a warm plate. (You’ll add it back later to finish cooking it.)

Then add the vegetables, stirring so that all pieces cook evenly. Start with the ones that will take longer to cook like broccoli, carrots and eggplant. Then add the other, faster-cooking kind like mushrooms, snow peas and beans and finally the leafy vegetables like bok choy. Once the vegetables have started to wilt, add the meat back in, still stirring.

As you’re stirring, you should be able to hear the food sizzle. If you can’t, either the heat isn’t high enough or you’re stirring so fast you’re dissipating too much heat. So either turn up the heat or slow down on the stirring. And make sure you spread the food all along the sides of the wok. Don’t let it gather in the center.

Finally add the sauce, which will probably be some combination of soy sauce, oyster sauce, hoisin sauce and maybe vinegar or wine with salt and/or sugar added and cornstarch, which is used for thickening. Push the food up the sides of the wok and make a well in the center of the food. Pour the sauce in the well, stirring it so that it heats rapidly and thickens before you stir it into the meat and vegetables.

Depending on the recipe, you may put a lid on the wok at this point and allow the meat and vegetables to steam for a few minutes.

That’s it. In all, maybe five minutes have passed from the time you poured on the oil to the time when you’re heaping your stir-fried masterpiece into a serving bowl. (Better hope you remembered to cook the rice or noodles first.)