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When do you add bok choy when cooking stir fry? Other ingredients are mushrooms, carrots, red peppers, broccoli, green onions. This is my first time cooking stir fry and I'm not sure of the order to add them.

Karen M
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    Compared to what? In stir fry, the other ingredients are important so that one can serve a final dish with all of the components cooked correctly. So, we would need to know all of the ingredients to answer. – moscafj Mar 03 '20 at 00:06
  • Leaves or stems? I cook the stems for a while. Leaves get done and limp in only a few minutes. – Wayfaring Stranger Mar 04 '20 at 00:00

2 Answers2

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Bok choy should be the last ingredient you stir in; it is the ingredient that take the less time to cook.

but,

I would do it in two steps.

Stir fry the bok choy first, set aside and stir fry the other ingredients and add the bok choy back at the end to bring it back to heat.

The reason I would do it like that, is that bok choy will release lot of humidity when cooking, you do not want to start steaming ingredient.

Max
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One thing to know about stir fry - it's all in the timing. This is dependant on several factors. Size of wok, amount of heat, size of ingredients.
The second thing to know is that if you get it a bit wrong the first time, it's easy to fix for the next time. It's a very short learning curve.

The hardest part about stir-fry isn't this part, it's bringing together all your components at the same time - noodles, dumplings etc, all of which take about the same time to cook as the stir-fry, so you've got three pans on the go at once.
You can cheat & just do rice, or supermarket fresh noodles which can go in the microwave ;)

If you have a wok big enough to toss everything round properly without it flying everywhere & if we're talking 'supermarket plastic box of pre-prepared stir-fry', it can all go in at once, so long as you've enough room to keep it moving.

If you prepped it yourself into 'prettier' proportions than supermarkets do, then I'd get carrot & broccoli in first, follow with mushrooms, pepper, green onions & the bok choi stems. Add the leaves last; one final stir & it's ready to go. Total cooking time should be how long it takes to soften the carrot & broccoli; the rest you don't really need to get much beyond 'hot'.

As Max says, the green ends of the leaves will sweat as they cook down - you can use this to your advantage if you are going to drop a sauce at the end, anything with cornflour in it that would benefit from a 2-minute simmer with the lid on. That 2 mins will be enough to finish the bok choi too, so it can go in simultaneously.

Tetsujin
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