Are stir fries meant to be dry?

[speedymama]

I have made chicken stir fry a couple of times using strips of chicken with vegetables and noodles. I add either a dash of soya sauce or teriyaki sauce and some seasoning. However, it always comes out dry unless I add a couple of tablespoons of water. This then dilutes any flavour and it ends up tasting quite bland.

So are stir fries with noodles meant to be dry?
If not, do I need to add more sauce and what would you suggest?
What flavours would you suggest for igniting the taste buds?

Thanks

Hmmm, there are many many many different regional versions of this method of cooking and the term "stir fry" is like saying "grilling", you can have the cheese ont he toast crispy or brittle or stringy etc.

I would advise you to use a teaspoon of cornflour mixed with 2 tablespoons of water and your soy sauce and add that in the last 3 minutes of cooking, stirring well and making sure it bubbles. That way everything will get coated with a kind of gravy.

A good dollop of Hoi Sin sauce you can buy at any supermarket gets it a bit zipped up. And of course the holy trinity of garlic, chili and ginger sizzled in the oil in which you will be stir frying - you can fish it out before adding hteother ingredients - is a good flavour enhancer.

Thank you SW. I had not thought to use garlic, ginger or chilli.

No worries mate
I would advise you to use them to flavour the oil as garlic can burn very quickly and then makes everything taste bitter, so you may want to just crush a clove of garlic and split a chilli down the middle and sizzle them until the garlic is golden not black and then remove them

Are you using noodles in your stir-fries?

Yes, I'm using noodles. I tend to cook them first in boiling water and then add them a couple of minutes before serving. My problem is that there is never enough liquid to coat them without the addition of more water which in turn makes the gravy too runny and bland.

I always get the impression that other posters find making stir fries easy and palatable. I would like mine to be more palatable

this way works for me -
start with hot oil and aforementioned "holy trinity" I leave the seeds in the chilli for extra heat, but you can take them out to tone it down a bit - then brown the beef or chicken or whatever for a few mins and then remove from the oil - add all the veg to the wok and a few mins before serving, add the meat and any other sauce you want. give it time to get properly coated and then should be fine -

Add dry sherry, I use this in my stirfries all the time, it makes it really Chineesy iykwim