When do you add bok choy when cooking 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.

Fire is typically a poor heat source for direct cooking. It fluctuates with every breeze so the heating is very erratic. It also produces a lot of soot which tastes terrible and is bad for you.

When cooking on a campfire much better results are had by cooking next to the coals than above the flame. Cooking with a gas flame is more reliable of course.

A couple direct cooking applications of fire in the kitchen, that I can think of are:

• Flambe: Lighting a sauce which contains a lot of alcohol to burn off some of the raw alcohol taste.
• Roasting: Putting a steaming basket over a gas flame and charring the skin of peppers or eggplant.
• Caramelizing: Using a blowtorch to put a crust on creme brulee or to sear the exterior of a sous vide steak.

I would recommend starting with the blowtorch for several reasons:

1. It is harder to burn your house down with a torch than with a pan of flame.
2. Blow torches are useful for things outside of the kitchen like stripping paint or starting the grill.
3. There is something deeply satisfying about wielding a hissing, blue, knife of fire that appeals to the caveman within.

As for safety. Keep a fire extinguisher on hand. Don't let kids or pets in the kitchen when you are playing with fire. Keep your home owner's insurance current.