Oyster mushroom stir-fry.

Stir-frying mushrooms goes wrong when the pan is not hot enough or too full. Mushrooms dump a lot of water very quickly, and if the pan cannot boil it off instantly the temperature crashes and everything stews.

Two fixes: get the pan hotter than feels reasonable, and cook in two batches. Everything else here takes five minutes.

What you need

Stir-fry

• 12 oz oyster mushrooms, torn, or beech mushrooms, separated
• 2 tbsp neutral oil, in two additions
• 1 tbsp ginger, julienned
• 3 garlic cloves, sliced
• 4 scallions, cut into 2-inch lengths
• 1 red chilli, sliced (optional)

Sauce

• 2 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp shaoxing wine or dry sherry
• 1 tsp sugar
• 1 tsp toasted sesame oil
• ½ tsp cornflour, slaked in 1 tbsp water

Method

1. Mix the sauce in a small bowl before you turn the heat on. Stir-frying gives you no time to measure anything.
2. Heat the pan until it smokes. Genuinely — a wok or a heavy carbon-steel pan on the highest heat you have, dry, for two minutes.
3. First batch: half the oil, half the mushrooms, spread out. Leave them 90 seconds without stirring to get colour, then toss for another minute. Tip out onto a plate.
4. Second batch: repeat with the remaining oil and mushrooms. Tip out.
5. Aromatics: with the pan still very hot, add ginger, garlic and chilli and stir for 20 seconds — no longer, or the garlic burns.
6. Return the mushrooms, add the scallions, pour in the sauce, and toss hard for 45 seconds until it thickens and coats everything.
7. Serve immediately with rice. A stir-fry that sits for five minutes is a different, worse dish.

Species notes

Beech mushrooms (shimeji) are the traditional pick and the best textural fit — the stems stay snappy. Note they are genuinely bitter raw and need those four or five minutes of heat. Shiitake pushes the dish toward deep umami; slice the caps thick and freeze the stems for dashi. Chestnut adds crunch that survives the wok.

Do not add the sauce until the mushrooms are already browned. Liquid in a hot wok is fine; liquid in a wok full of raw mushrooms is a braise.

Making it a meal

Add pressed tofu with the second batch, or a handful of cashews at the end. Over rice, or tossed with cooked noodles in the pan for the last 30 seconds.

Common questions