Knowledge Base > Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half Hour)
Dan Marek - Ask Me Anything (Office Half Hour)
This event was on
Tuesday, July 15, 2025 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.
Question:
What is the secret to no-oil stir fry? I always feel like I need to add oil or end up adding too much water so it doesn't burn or stick to pan.
— Bonnie Schrowang
Answer:
So the secret basically here is to be able to, uh, deglaze and deglaze often, but with not a lot of water. So you basically, if you're making a stir fryer, typically you start with your ingredients, you know, like your onions and mushrooms or something like that. Um, and once they start to stick to the pan a little bit, you're just gonna deglaze with a little bit of water or vegetable stock or something like that. But I mean, just like a tablespoon should be able to do it. And your walk, uh, should be, you know, hot enough. So as you're basically adding it, it's releasing the vegetables from being stuck to the pan, but also it's the water's kind of, you know, uh, evaporating almost instantly as you're doing it at the same time. So it's a little bit of a dance, right? Going between the, the two things, making sure that you are, um, you know, doing, uh, just adding just enough liquid to it to be able to let the, the vegetables start to cook, but then also release from the pan at the same time. Um, so yeah, just a little bit of liquid goes a long way for that, but you have to do it often in order to get the nice, uh, you know, uh, caramelization that happens on those two.