How can I improve an asian sauté / stir fry?

A few tips:

• Marinate the meat first (after chopping, before stir-frying);

• Mix the sauce first - don't just dump the ingredients separately into the wok;

• Add corn starch or tapioca flour to the sauce to thicken it. I wouldn't even call it a sauce without any thickening agent. About 1 tbsp per cup of sauce should be alright. (Note: The sauce should be about 50-60% water, don't use a whole cup of soy sauce!)

• Add some other savoury or flavour-enhancing ingredients to the sauce - i.e. toasted sesame oil, rice vinegar, brown sugar/honey. And ditch the oregano.

• Briefly steam the vegetables in the wok - add just a little bit of the sauce, then cover it for a few minutes. This will make them much more tender after frying. (Note that this only applies to hard vegetables like carrots, celery, broccoli, etc. - add the soft vegetables afterward)

• Add minced garlic with the ginger. The two go together like white on rice.

To make it fantastic, here are a few tips:

• wok needs to be screaming hot
• sautee garlic and ginger first, followed by harder vegetables, followed by softer veg, followed by your protein
• I only ever use salt OR soy, not both
• Oregano is not a particularly Asian ingredient; try Thai basil instead
• use sesame oil, not veg
• Look for cookbooks by Martin Yan

There is also a depressing Western tendency to lump anything from the East under the term Asian, when the variety of different cuisines and flavours is staggering, and vastly different from each other. While some ingredients are similar--as many ingredients in the West are similar--one needs only look at a few things to see that 'Asian' as a descriptor for food is merely the product of Eurocentric thought. Thai cuisine is based around the sweet/salty/sour/spicy axes; Japanese cuisine is ethereally delicate; the Koreans rely on a lot of fermented products. This is without even addressing the concept of 'Chinese' cuisine (much like Italian, it's microregional cuisines) or venturing into the south Pacific.

Just saying.

Did you try adding apple vinegar with some little sugar? it will give you sour taste, and you can also use coconut milk in your recipe which will give you the fantastic taste that want.

If you like heat put some chili oil or dried red chilis in there.

The biggest improvement to our stir fry came from replacing the soy sauce added to the dish at the end with hoisin sauce. A friend from China calls it "asian ketchup". It's a lot thicker by itself, so you don't need the additional thickeners with it. It's also a lot more likely to burn, so be careful and don't add it too early. I still marinate the meat with soy sauce/(rice wine or apple) vinegar ahead of time.

You might be interested in trying other varieties of rice with your stir fry. Jasmine and Basmati rice have interesting flavors of their own, which can add quite a bit to complementary dishes. Brown rice is often chewier and more flavorful, though it takes longer to cook.

They can be found in the bulk food section of many whole foods markets, or in the Asian area of certain supermarkets; more exotic varieties might be available in an international food shop.

When cooking stir-fried dishes with meat, I often griddle the meat seperately, rest it, then slice and mingle it into the pan at the end of cooking. It stays juicier and avoids blackening the pan.