Vegetable Stir Fry (2024)

This is a Vegetable Stir Fry to make your own. Use it for any veggies you want, and serve it as a main or as a side dish with any Asian food.The tasty Chinese brown sauce is just like you get from Chinese restaurants and will make any veg totally scoff-able. And there’s a generous amount of it to soak yourrice!

Vegetable Stir Fry

I make this approximately once a week, and it completely baffles me how I’ve been running this recipe website for 5 years (!!) without sharing it.

A Vegetable Stir Fry is:

• my end-of-weekFridge Forage meal;

• how I (happily) consume a ton of vegetables in one sitting;

• something I make with a mix of vegetables – or just one (like snow peas or Asian mushrooms).

I serve it over rice or noodles. I toss noodlesinto it while cooking. I top homemade Chinese noodle soups with it. And I make instant ramen respectable by piling on this saucy stir fried vegetables.

So I repeat again – 5 years. No recipe. BAFFLED. 🤷🏻‍♀️

What goes in my Vegetable Stir Fry

You can basically ignore all the vegetables in the photo below, and visualise whatever YOU want to use! Just use the sauce part of my recipe. 🙂

Can I make this with Charlie?

100% yes, you’ll need 4 tablespoons of Charlie and directions are in the recipe below. For new readers, “Charlie” is my ready made All Purpose Chinese Stir Fry Sauce. RTE readers and I love him so much, we’ve named him. He has a shelf life of months, and can be used in 90% of my stir fries and noodles, either outright or with the addition of a few extra flavourings.Try him once, and you’ll be obsessed with him too!

How to make stir fried vegetables

There’s only two rules here:

1. Have all the ingredients chopped and ready to toss in the wok / skillet because this recipe moves fast once you start cooking!

2. Don’t let the veggies cook until floppy and sad. They should be vibrant,just cooked so they don’t have the raw bite to them but they’re still a bit crisp. That’s the point of optimum flavour and nutrition for vegetables!

What order to cook vegetables in stir fries

There’s no need to turn this into an exact science! Just start by cooking aromatics to form the flavour base then add vegetables that take the longest to cook first, and delicate things like leafy greens towards the end.

Here’s a rough guide:

1. Aromatics in first- onion, leeks, garlic, ginger, chilli

2. Firm vegetablesin second – like carrot, capsicum/bell peppers, stems of Asian Greens (Buk Choy in this recipe), zucchini / courgettes, eggplant, asparagus, canned baby corn, green beans, okra.

3. Quicker cooking vegetables added next- snow peas, kale, cabbage.

4. Delicate vegetablesin last – toss until just wilted. Leaves of Asian Greens, spinach, bean sprouts, green onions, fresh herbs.

Pre cooked vegetables – broccoli, cauliflower and broccolini should be pre-cooked prior to using in a stir fry as they take too long to cook from raw in a stir fry (unless chopped small). And though I rarely use them in stir fries, I also pre cook things like pumpkin, potato, squash, and other root vegetables.

A big skillet of vegetables never looked so tasty!!

Also – thestir frysauce. I like making plenty of it so it can soak through the rice or noodles, or whatever you serve it over. It’s also particularly good at disguising cauliflower rice – for those of you *trying* to cut down on carbs. 😇

What to serve with Stir Fried Vegetables

This can be served as:

• a main dish with rice or noodles (try cauliflower rice for a low carb option); or

• a vegetable side dish.

Though this stir fry has Chinese origins, don’t restrict yourself to serving this alongside justChinese dishes. You’ll see similar version of this sauce used all across Asia. So serve it as a vegetable side the next time you make any Asian dishes – such asVietnamese, Thai or Japanese! Here are a few suggestions (just a few….😂):

What to serve with Stir Fried Vegetables

Woah. For someone who’s taken so long to share such a *simple* recipe, I sure did have a lot to say about it! 😂 – Nagi x

Watch how to make it

Life of Dozer

More Dozer pool action! Well, not so much action here, just Dozer climbing out of the pool. Currently using a ramp because the step in is so high, he actually sprained his lower back with all his crazy leaping in and out.

I know, I know. First World Problems.🙈