Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Hours)

This event was on Tuesday, January 18, 2022 at 11:00 am Pacific, 2:00 pm Eastern

Join Chef Dan Marek in his virtual office as he welcomes all of your questions. This event was created for you and we encourage you to Ask Anything – from cooking techniques to cours… Read More.

Recorded

Question:

My stir fry's always come out gray brown,even if not overcooked. Do I have to cook each ingredient separately and mix them all at the end to prevent that?

— richard norris

Answer:

So that's a good question that I've seen people recommend that where you can saute your individual ingredients to make sure that they come out just right but I've never done that myself. Typically they're coming up gray or brown means that either a they were overcooked or be there were probably more of a water saute. We had a lot of liquid in the bottom of your walk or the cooking utensil here in there are a couple key things to making a good stir fry one is having the right pan, right? So using a walk as definitely thing I would highly recommend I usually use oil in doing stir fries as well. But I use a very tiny amount, you know, just to be able to coat the pan and that's it. So I'll just put a little in the pan and then wipe it down with a paper towels have a thin coating and then you turn the pan on high to be able to get that oil to be able to heat up a bit and it'll start. Whistling a bit and then that's when you put your ingredients in and again, you want to put them in as you know, what takes the longest to be able to go in but on high that can be different for certain things. So I will often parboil my broccoli before putting them into US stir-fry just because it takes so long for the broccoli to cook through and to get the two feel that I want onto them as well speaking of the broccoli. Like if you're adding like broccoli and like an acid to it it might gray up a little bit on those two. Now what I mentioned too early was probably might be what happening is when you're cooking if you have a lot of liquid in the bottom of the pan that will braise your ingredients and you know, what you want is the natural like the greens like in something like the broccoli you want those to kind of naturally come out just by quickly heating them. But if you overcook them, they there's a filament that can actually be chemically rude released to turn it like a grayish green. It's probably what's happening. So that's typically from over cooking. Or over brazing. So if you're cooking it in the water, it might have a different chemical compound that's happening to that. So my big recommendations a use a walk being used on high heat get your meze and plus ready so you can you know, put them in as you need and it's gonna be high heat. So everything's gonna go kind of fast on it and make sure you're not having a lot of liquid at the bottom of the dish. So cooking all your ingredients and then if you have a sauce adding your sauce at the end of the dishes to the beginning, so you're not ending up brazing your veggies. I hope that helps.
Dan Marek

Dan Marek

Director of Plant-Based Culinary & Dev

rouxbe.com