Farmers Market Stir Fry

Stir fries are my go to meal when Im short on time and need to make a quick and delicious dinner. In this Instructable, I'll show you how I made a tasty stir fry using fresh local ingredients from a farmers market.

To start, you need to decide what to put in the stir fry. Some of my favorite vegetables are snap peas, broccoli, mushrooms, carrots, and peppers. Feel free to experiment with different vegetables, it's the best way to find out what you like!

For this stir fry, I used oyster mushrooms, assorted colorful sweet peppers, broccoli, carrots, garlic, and ginger.

Before I cook anything, I'll prepare all the ingredients beforehand. This makes the cooking step go a lot easier. I don't really measure out the amounts for each ingredient, I just cut up what looks like enough for a meal. The amounts of ginger and garlic are more important, here I used three cloves of garlic and about 1/2 Tbsp of chopped ginger (I ended up with too much ginger so I would use less next time). I have five different types of ingredients in this stir fry, and its important to separate them because they will all be cooked at different times.

To start, I chopped up the carrots, broccoli, and peppers into evenly sized pieces. This is important because you want all the bits of vegetables to cook equally. Some vegetables like carrots and broccoli might take longer to cook, so I'll chop them up smaller and start cooking those earlier.

After that, I washed the mushrooms and carefully separated them and cut the ends off. I got oyster mushrooms from the farmers market for this, but any type would work. Oyster mushrooms are more delicate and have a lighter flavor than other mushrooms.

Finally, I diced some ginger and garlic. To prepare the ginger, I used a spoon to scrape the peel off and then I chopped it into flat slices (shown in photo). I then cut thin pencils out of the slices and cut those pencils into cubes (in photos). For the garlic, I peeled it and cut into larger pieces than the ginger.

Now that the ingredients are ready, we can start cooking!

In addition to the vegetables, I used olive oil, sherry, soy sauce, and honey. I got all of those out on the counter so I can easily add them in while the vegetables are cooking.

To begin, I started cooking some (instant) rice, and heated up about a tablespoon of oil in a large pan (a wok is better).

Once the pan is hot and the oil is shimmering, put in the mushrooms. For the oyster mushrooms I had, I cooked them so the smooth side is down for a couple minutes, then flipped and cooked for another minute. Then, once they are cooked add a little salt and set aside for later.

Now, add a little more oil to the pan and saute the garlic and ginger. Keep it moving around in the pan so it doesn't burn.

After the garlic and ginger has been in for about a minute, add in the vegetables that take longer to cook. In my stir fry, I added the broccoli first. Cook the broccoli until it starts to get soft, then add in the peppers and carrots. I added the carrots later because I like them a little crunchy, If you like soft carrots add them in with the broccoli. Keep stirring and moving the vegetables around in the pan so they cook evenly.

Once the vegetables are almost cooked, add in some soy sauce, sherry, and honey to the pan. Make sure to taste it, and add more seasonings and sauces until it tastes right. I've found that I really like those flavors, but there are many other things that go well in stir fries, and it doesn't hurt to experiment with different ones.

Thank you for reading, and happy stir frying!