In this instructional video, Sam walks a beginner through the complete process of preparing a chicken and vegetable stir‑fry, using the dish as a vehicle to teach fundamental cooking techniques. He begins with meat preparation, emphasizing the importance of patting the chicken dry, pounding it to an even thickness, generously seasoning with salt and pepper, and allowing it to rest so the salt draws out moisture for better caramelization. Sam then explains pan heat management, recommending a pre‑heated pan, proper oil amount, and adjusting heat levels throughout cooking. He details the step‑by‑step cooking of the chicken to develop a crust, pulling it early and resting it under foil to retain juiciness, and preserving the rendered meat juices for later use. The video shifts to vegetable preparation, stressing the need to prep all ingredients before cooking, using cutting tricks for uniform pieces, and planning the order of addition to avoid overcooking. Sam demonstrates the sequencing of aromatics, onions, mushrooms, zucchini, and spinach, and highlights the value of letting food sit briefly in the pan to develop flavor. He then covers simple yet effective seasoning with soy sauce, sesame oil, rice vinegar, and acidity (lemon/lime) to balance salt and brighten the dish. Finally, Sam discusses plating and garnish (sesame seeds, scallions), and ends with a motivational reminder that cooking skill improves with practice and attention. The video is a comprehensive, tip‑rich guide for anyone seeking to master stir‑fry fundamentals.
Chapters
The other day, I was teaching one of my friends how to cook for the first time. We are talking ground level stuff. This person did not have many skills in the kitchen, so we started off with a very basic dish, and I just took them along for that journey and taught them things along the way. But what I was realizing was how many tips and tricks and skills you can learn from one dish. I started pointing out all these things, things that I take for granted that can actually make you a much better cook. So the first dish we are going to start out with is one of my favorites, something I've been cooking for years. It's a stir fry. And if you can master just the stir fry with some meat or some fish, you can cook that dish for the rest of your life and probably be satisfied at least some type of variation of it. So let's get after it. We're going to do a chicken and vegetable stir fry, because that's what I have in the fridge. But feel free to sub out the chicken for any type of meat or any type of fish. And that goes for the vegetables as well. You can sub those out for whatever you have. These tips are still gonna work great for whatever you guys have in your fridge. Tip number one, make sure the meat is extremely dry. You wanna pat it dry with a paper towel. A lot of times when the chicken is like sitting in a bag or whatever it comes in, it's gonna have a lot of extra liquid. And. And what's going to happen is if you try to cook that chicken just like that, you're going to boil the chicken. And that is not what you want because, well, it's what you want if you're boiling chicken. But if you're actually trying to fry chicken and caramelize the skin, that's where the flavor is going to come from. And if it's wet, you're not going to get that stuff. Tip number two is evening out your meat. And as you can see, this chicken breast is uneven. We've got a thick side and a thin side. And chicken is already extremely difficult to cook because it dries out so easily. So evening out the meat. Meat is going to help you so much in the long run. We're going to put it in a bag, something that protects it from the cutting board, and pound it out until it is nice and even. So that thick side, you can just kind of work on that until it mimics the thin side. Tip number three is a two parter, and it deals with the seasoning of the actual meat. So we are going to hit it with salt and pepper, and you want to make sure you have enough season seasoning, because remember, you are seasoning just the outside of the meat, and that has to carry through the entire piece. So just think about it like when you're biting into a piece of meat, the only seasoning you're going to taste is that outer layer. If you tend to follow recipes, a lot of times they skimp on the salt and your stuff turns out under season. And that is probably the easiest way to screw up a dish. So make sure you've got enough seasoning on there to really bring out the flavors. And then the next part is just let that sit for a little bit. If not going to cook your meat for a little bit, just put it in the fridge, let it dry out. So the salt is actually going to pull a lot of moisture out of the chicken, which is going to help with that caramelizing. So if you just let that sit for at least 15 minutes before it goes into the pan, you'll see it's going to start pulling out that liquid. And then again, just give that another pat dry and you are well on your way to crispy skin. Tip number four is controlling the heat of your pan pan, which seems so obvious, but I see this all the time. Whether you're using gas or electric, there isn't just one setting. I swear, there's a ton of control when it comes to the actual heat. You've got a very low simmer, you've got a medium low, you've got a medium, you've got a medium high, and then you've got a high heat. So there's a whole range of heat settings, and it's just something you gotta get used to. But remember, throughout your cooking process, you have the ability to control that thing. So if things get too crazy and too hot, just turn it down. And if you're not getting the action you want, just turn it up. So you are the master of your heat settings. That brings us to tip number five, which is making sure you've got enough lubrication in that pan so things cook properly and don't burn another one. I see all the time people are skimping out on the oil or fat. Maybe it's health reasons, they're a little scared of it. I would say if you're scared of using too much oil, just try to get a healthy oil, which isn't going to be bad for you. And make sure you put enough in the pan so you can cook your Stuff properly. So tip number six is make sure you heat up that pan first before you add the oil. So once it's lightly smoking, then add your oil, because if you add it earlier, it's going to start to degrade as it heats up. So you want the least amount of time with that oil in the pan. Now we are going to slide in that chicken and get that crispiness. And we're not trying to blast this chicken away. We are trying to slide slowly, develop the crust over time. That's why we've got that medium low heat going. So I'm cooking it for about four minutes on one side and you'll see that little white ring starting to develop. And that is cooked chicken right there. And we're just going to check the crust every now and then. And right there, the crust is not good enough for my liking. So we put it back for another minute and then we hit our perfect caramelized point right there. Flip that chicken over and then it's always going to be a little less time on the other side. So cook that side for about two to three minutes. Tip number seven, when you're feeling that chicken and it's nice and firm, but it still has a little bit of give, you can pull it and you don't have to cook it completely through, especially with chicken breast, because it dries out so early. So I would recommend pulling it just a little bit early and then wrapping it in tin foil because it's still going to cook. Cook a few degrees. That's like a master chef tip right there. Pulling that meat early. So it just comes up to that perfect cook point. Tip number eight is a two parter. One, make sure you let the meat sit for at least 10 minutes. It's going to reabsorb those juices and stay nice and juicy. And the other one is if you get any juice that separates from the meat just like this, and that's normally going to happen with meat, after a few minutes, some of it will seep out. Make sure you do not get rid of that juice. That is extra flavor. You do not want to leave any meat juice behind, so save that and you can use that in your dish later, which you will see coming up soon. Moving on to the veggies. And tip number nine is prepping everything before you actually cook, which is so important, especially when you're dealing with high heat cooking, because you don't want to be cooking and cutting all the time. I used to do that when I was younger and things got a little out of control. And I still do that from time to time when I'm lazy. It's not the end of the world. But if you want perfection with your food, it's much easier if everything is prepped out. So here are the veggies we are using with our stir fry. And we are going to prep all of this stuff, which means just washing everything and chopping it up how you like it. We've got the mushrooms, we're going to give those a chop. I've got this little piece of onion. I am going to chop that up as well. Here's a quick little bonus tip. When you are cutting zucchini, if you're having trouble getting even pieces because it's uneven like that, just cut it where it's uneven. Now you have two pieces that are a little more straight and that will help with your actual cutting. Another little cutting technique is if you've got this spinach right here, it's got the stem and it's got the leaf. Sometimes the stem isn't going to come with it. It's going to be already pre chopped. But if it comes like this, you can just chop that off because we've got the delicate leaf which is going to cook differently than the stem. And I'm actually going to put the stem with the aromatics. So we're going to wash that spinach, we're going to get all those veggies prepped. Then I'm going to move on to cutting the aromatics for this dish. We've got a little bit of chili, we've got a little bit of garlic that I'm going to slice up and then some ginger that I'm going to ch and just keep those all together. Okay, We've got everything prepped out, We've got everything in place, but we need a of piece plan. That is the next tip, creating a plan to execute this stuff. Because if you don't have a plan, things are going to go to in the kitchen. So really, there's no perfect way to cook anything. But there are some good techniques that will help you execute really good tasting food. And that is going to happen over time with a lot of practice. But what we're going to do is we're just going to look at all of our prep food and we're just going to start pondering, we're just going to start thinking, thinking about when these things should be cooked. So if you got something like zucchini, maybe that will go a little later. Of course, the spinach is delicate, so the first thing we are going to start out with is cooking the onions and the mushrooms. I thought they would cook well together because they're very similar in size. So we are going to use that chicken fat, all of that flavor in there, that oil. Do not throw that out. Throw the mushrooms and the onions right in there. Cook them for a few minutes just to get those started. Then I'm gonna dump in my aromatics. So I usually wait a little bit because aromatics will burn on a high temperature. Those are little skills you learn over time. So the aromatics are going in. A few minutes later, let those cook down. And that brings me to my next tip, which is not overcooking your vegetables. So we've got this zucchini right here, and we're gonna throw that in much later in the process, maybe five minutes after the onions and everything else start, because zucchini will overcook and turn mushy. And maybe you like that. I used to overcook zucchini all the time. But the truth is, vegetables are delicious raw, and you don't need to cook them all the way through. They are good with a little bit of that snap, a little bit of that crunch. So you don't want to just destroy them in the pan. You want to retain some of that texture. The next step is just letting things check, chill. I see this all the time. People are going crazy. They're stirring it. They get that add in the kitchen, and they're scared to just let things sit. Maybe they're a little nervous that things are going to burn. But if you don't let things relax in that pan, they're not going to get that nice crust. So sometimes just let your food relax there. Let it build up that delicious flavor on the bottom. As you can see, I let the zucchini sit for about a minute without stirring, stirring it, and then look at that beautiful color. That is flavor right there. Then you can stir it around, let it sit again, let those flavors develop. After that, cooks for about two or three minutes. We're gonna add in that spinach, and that's just gonna wilt down very quickly. So after that spinach is nicely wilted, I am going to slice up that chicken. And look how beautiful that is because we took the time to flatten it out and salt it. It's cooked perfectly, and it's juicy. I'm gonna throw that into the stir fry along with the juice. Do not forget that meat juice. Now we are moving on to the next tip, which is properly seasoning Your food. We have some very basic seasonings right here, and I could get into a whole video about this. So we're just gonna keep it really simple. We've got soy sauce, we've got a little bit of sesame oil, and we've got some rice vinegar. So if you think about seasoning, we've got salt already in the dish, just plain salt. We're going to add a little bit of soy, which is another salty product, and that is just bringing out the flavors and also adding a little bit of that extra fermented funk of the soy sauce. We're going to go in with just a little bit of sesame oil. And remember, be careful with the sesame oil. It is a very strong seasoning, and you can't take away. So just start off slow and work your way up. And then the last seasoning, which is so important, you hear chefs talking about it all the time, is acidity. So this means lemons, limes, and vinegar. Anything with acidity, which is really going to make your food pop. So if the salt is bringing out and enhancing the flavor of the food, the acidity is just going to make it brighter and sing to the heavens. Just give that a few stirs around. Make sure you get those seasonings nice and incorporated into that dish. That looks beautiful and ready to go. Which brings us to our last tip, which is presentation, which is an important one for me. Not everyone really cares, which is all right. But I think if your food looks better, it's going to be more enjoyable to going to complete that circle. So just get something nice to present it in, and then, of course, you can garnish it. And you guys already know what I'm going to garnish this with, which is the scally wags and the sesame seeds. The mike special. Finish that baby off and enjoy. Look at that thing. I've been cooking stir fries for years. It was one of the first things I learned how to cook. And I'm still learning, and I'm still still getting better. Most of cooking is just paying attention, honing in on your skills, and improving. Which brings me to my last point, which is you gotta practice, guys. You gotta get in the kitchen, and you gotta just continue to develop your skills. Really, cooking is just about concentrating on what you're doing, and you will pick up on things intuitively on your own, and you will get better. So just get over those fears, just keep doing it, and you will be an awesome cook in no time. Sam.
