The BEST ways to make Gai Lan👌 + 2 Quick & Easy Stir Fry Chinese Broccoli Recipes

So what's the secret to making fresh tasting green and crunchy gai lan? I'm going to give you all the tips by showing you how to make stir-fried gai lan with ginger, and for those who don't like ginger, I'll also do a version with oyster sauce. First of all, you need gai lan, and not just any gai lan. When you buy this at the supermarket, the first thing you look at is the bottom of the stems. You check how green it is. If it's turning white, that means the moisture is escaping, so it would be too old. Another telltale sign is that if it's an old gai lan, the leaves will start to wrinkle and close up. This one was a little hard to look at at the supermarket because they already packaged it in the bag. Another thing you want to look for is if it has blooming flowers or flowers that have already opened. If that's the case, then this means this gai lan is too mature and it's too old. Gai lan is known for its crunchiness, so you want to pick something that has a nice, thick stem. First of all, when you get it back, you want to cut off this edge because it's starting to oxidize from the previous cutting, and this thick skin out here is actually quite tough as well, so I'll get a peeler. You peel it just like an asparagus, and that helps it not get all stringy when you eat it. And then you want to rip off these outer leaves. So in the fancy five-star restaurants, people would discard this. We're not a fancy five-star restaurant, so we'll keep it, but these ones would not be as tender as the middle part. You eat the gai lan for the middle part. All right, for these big pieces, I'm keeping this leaf, and I'm going to cut here right on the diagonal to make the stem a little thinner so it can cook quicker. Now it's a little bit more even. These two pieces would cook more evenly. So after you pick the outer leaves off, if you don't want to use it in a stir-fry, you can use this in a soup, but I'm going to use it in the stir-fry as well. You see all the vibrous ends on this? So these will be all stringy and will become like floss in your teeth. So I'm going to cut that right off, okay? And then check the leaves and see if there's any like gross pieces. I'll probably remove that as well, like some yellow, broken. I'm going to show you two different ways of making gai lan. First, we're going to stir-fry it with ginger juice. A lot of restaurants do this because ginger enhances the flavor of the gai lan. So for these hard-to-reach places, you can use a spoon. So I'm going to mince some. Now I'm going to microplane this to squeeze the juice out. If using the microplane is taking a little longer than expected, you can use a small blender. A little bit of liquid, much better. Put it over a fine mesh strainer. Should have just done that in the first place. All right, let's squeeze the rest of this out. That was night and day. Let's taste it and see how how potent this stuff is. It's pretty potent. Spicy, very spicy. So you don't need this much, you only need a tablespoon, so you can save this for later. The ginger juice was the hardest part of this recipe, so now that's over, the rest is smooth sailing. To have all your ingredients ready, we're just going to make a thin cornstarch slurry to help the flavor stick to the vegetables at the end. Little bit of cornstarch, and a little bit of water, and a little mix. Now having all these ingredients ready is going to help you when you're at the stove because you wouldn't have time to go and look for your ingredients when you're actually cooking because this only takes a couple of minutes. First, heat your wok up to medium and add in your oil. Fry your minced ginger till it's fragrant. Add in your gai lan and turn up the heat. Gai lan doesn't expel much water, so add some water in there to soften it. I'll be using chicken stock to give it more flavor. Add a little bit of salt to taste and add sugar. The sugar keeps the gai lan nice and green and helps reduce the bitterness of the vegetable. Cover with a lid and let it sit for one to two minutes to soften the gai lan and for it to absorb the flavors. When you see the vegetables are nice and green, add in your rice wine at the edge of your wok and your ginger juice. This increases the aroma and brings out the freshness. As a final touch, add a little bit of cornstarch slurry so the vegetables are nice and shiny for the gram. It also helps stick the sauce onto the vegetable. That's it! You're basically done with your stir-fried gai lan with ginger in less than five minutes. Now, if you don't like ginger like Kevin, you can go with another classic, gai lan with oyster sauce. But before we get into it, help us out by hitting that like button and subscribe. So for this, we're gonna go with baby gai lan. Baby gai lan is a little more expensive than the mature variety, but you basically don't have to do much. You don't have to shave, you don't have to cut it, you don't have to slice it. It's pretty tender as is. The trade-off is that it's less crunchy than the thicker variety. So if you're lazy, get baby gai lan. Like before, prepare your ingredients and we're ready to rumble. Warm up some oil on high heat at the beginning. Add in your gai lan. Like before, add a little bit of sugar to help it stay green. Then turn down the heat and cover for two minutes to soften it up. Now turn up the heat, add a little bit of oyster sauce. Stir, stir, stir, stir, stir. Turn down the heat and add in your slurry. Quickly toss it and you're done. Since you're still here till the end, here's a bonus tip for you. Use lard or cook gai lan with some meat. It will help to remove the bitterness as well. That's why gai lan and beef stir-fry is such a popular dish. Alright, I hope these tips were helpful. Thanks for watching and I'll see you later.