The other day I prepared General Tso's Tofu. It tasted good, but the result was not quite what I wanted. Like with many other Chinese dishes, the tofu cubes in General Tso's Tofu are coated in a thin jelly-like layer consisting of cornstarch, liquid and seasoning. The coating is supposed to darken a bit, once it caramelizes in the hot pan. This adds a nice sweet-sour taste and appetizing gloss. (This is a nice example.)
The coating stuck well to the tofu cubes as long as they were raw. But once I had stirred the cubes in a hot pan, the coating came off the cubes and accumulated in lumps that eventually stuck to the spatula.
How can I prevent the coating from coming off the cubes while stir-frying? Is there a way to do this without deep-frying?
Best Answer
The key in a stir-fry is that the ingedients can at all times move about freely. A spatula shouldn't really be needed, the way it is in sautéing, rather you use a spoon/ladle to just, well, stir the loose mixture. In fact even that isn't ideal: arguably, it should rather be called toss-fry, because vigorously moving the pan is the best way to keep everything apart, while minimising damage to items like coated tofu.
A proper wok is certainly the best utensil for doing this since its round shape keeps the tossed-up ingredients best from flying out of the pan. I don't actually have a wok, but I find non-stick aluminium pans to work well too, as they can be controlled easily and conduct heat quickly. (Purists will probably disagree here...)
At any rate I wouldn't care to do a stir-fry in a heavy traditional european cast-iron pan. Way too inert.
Apart from that, a couple of conditions are important to allow for easy enough movement:
Again, all of this is clearly best accompished with a wok over an intense gas flame, but can also be done without.