Name: Pork and Mushroom Stir Fry
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 10 min
Total time: 25 min
Ingredients: 200 g pork butt or tenderloin (, thinly sliced); 1/4 tsp. salt (, optional (you can skip this for a less salted dish)); 1/2 tbsp. cooking wine; 1/2 tbsp. oyster sauce; 4 tbsp. water or chicken stock; 1/4 tsp. white pepper; 3 tsp. cornstarch; 2 tsp. sesame oil; cooking oil as needed; 10 fresh shiitake mushrooms (,remove the roots and sliced); 1/2 tbsp. oyster sauce; 1/2 tbsp. light soy sauce; 4 scallions (,cut into small sections white part and green part separated); 1 garlic cloves (,sliced); 1/2 thumb ginger (,skin removed and sliced)

Easy and homestyle pork and shiitake mushroom stir fry (香菇炒肉片).

This is one of the easy meat series. In Chinese cuisine, we love to stir fry all types of meat (pork, beef, chicken) with seasonal vegetables. You can find we have fresh peppers, wood ear mushrooms, onion, snow peas. This mushroom pork stir frying is also a national dish loved by many children. Although no extra spices and herbs are added, the dish is rich in flavor. The tender an juice meat with a faint aroma of shiitake mushroom is so appealing. If you are a mushroom lover, do not miss it.

Although it is quite simple, I highly recommend you reading the whole post and pay attention to the parts with colors. All the tips has been highlighted with different colors.

Ingredients you will need

200g pork butt or tenderloin, thinly sliced
¼ tsp. salt
½ tbsp. cooking wine
½ tbsp. oyster sauce
4 tbsp. water or chicken stock
¼ tsp. white pepper
3 tsp. cornstarch
2 tsp. sesame oil
cooking oil as needed
10 fresh shiitake mushrooms, remove the roots and sliced
½ tbsp. oyster sauce
½ tbsp. light soy sauce
4 scallions, cut into small sections white part and green part separated
1 garlic cloves, sliced
½ thumb ginger, skin removed and sliced

Instructions

1. Thinly slice the pork. Add salt, cooking wine, oyster sauce and water (or chicken stock) and white pepper. Grasp the pork slice for 2-3 minutes until all the juice is well absorbed. Then add cornstarch in. Set aside for 10 minutes. Add sesame oil just before frying.

Cooks Note about marinating

The most difficult part for meat stir frying is to marinating process. If the marinating is not well done, you will end up with dry, chewy and plaint pork slices after stir frying. To make the pork tender, we have two important steps.

Add enough liquid to make the pork slices juicy themselves. So grasping is the key step. We need to make sure the liquid completely absorbed.
Use cornstarch to form a protecting shell to prevent pork slices from loosing the liquid. And adding a small batch of cold oil can help them from sticky to the bottom of the wok.

2.Heat your wok or pan firstly. Add cooking oil to form a 2-3 cm high layer (do not be scared by the oil amount, we do not eat them all). Spread the pork sliced in when the oil begins to warm but not hot. Let them stay for around 5-8 seconds and then quickly fry them until turns pale. Transfer out immediately.

It is 100% ok to find there are some faint pink color inside the slices based on the following two reasons. Firstly the heat of the pork slices will continue cooking them (后热效应) and secondly they will be recooked in wok later. So do not overcook your pork slices. Transfer out as long as they turns pale.

3.Remove the extra oil and save them for vegetable stir fries. Keep around 1 tablespoon of oil and fry garlic, ginger and scallion until aromatic. Place shiitake mushroom in, add oyster sauce and light soy sauce. Fry for around 30 seconds until the shiitake mushrooms are just cooked.

4.Return scallion sections and pork slices in. Mix well and serve hot!