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Adam Liaw shares ‘ancient technique’ to restaurant-quality stir-fry
Over the past few months, MasterChef Australia 2010 winner Adam Liaw has been making the most of his time at home during COVID-19 lockdown by whipping up delicious dishes for his wife and three young kids.
With his son Christopher, 7, and four-year-old daughter Anna by his side in the kitchen, the 42-year-old Aussie-Malaysian chef has gone back to basics in order to pass on some of his culinary wisdom — and he’s already seeing results!
“They can do most things in the kitchen already,” the proud dad tells Yahoo Lifestyle.
Adam, along with Australian Eggs, is encouraging other parents to get their own children involved in meal prep and no, you don’t need to have won a cooking competition to be a good teacher.
He suggests keeping things simple, ignoring the mess and remembering that it’s not so much about creating a ‘perfect’ dish but having fun and learning important life skills along the way.
“When you’re cooking with kids you want to make everything as easy as possible,” Adam says.
To reduce clean-up and effort when making kid-friendly pancakes, for example, Adam recommends doing away with bowls and whisks and instead blitzing the ingredients in a blender.
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“It makes life so much easier when you’ve got kids because they love pressing the buttons and cracking the eggs and there’s not a lot of washing up to do,” he explains.
“The secret to making it work is actually adding the eggs and milk first because a blender acts as a vortex and pulls all the material down onto the blade,” he adds.
That way the dry ingredients don’t get ‘stuck’ in a clump at the bottom which is a one-way ticket to less-than-fluffy pancakes.
Adam’s second tip is for home cooks of all ages who struggle with chewy, tough meat in their stir-fry dishes.
“If you find that your stir fry isn’t as tender as it is in a Chinese restaurant, the simplest way is to stir an egg white into your meat marinade,” he says.
“Egg white is slightly alkaline which helps to tenderise the meat. It’s an ancient Chinese technique known as ‘velveting’ so if you’ve ever wondered why your stir-fried meats aren’t as tender as they are in a Chinese restaurant, the secret might be a bit of egg white.”
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