This is a Vegetable Stir Fry to make your own. Use it for any veggies you want, and serve it as a main or as a side dish with any Asian food. The tasty Chinese brown sauce is just like you get from Chinese restaurants and will make any veg totally scoff-able. And there’s a generous amount of it to soak your rice!
Vegetable Stir Fry
I make this approximately once a week, and it completely baffles me how I’ve been running this recipe website for 5 years (!!) without sharing it.
A Vegetable Stir Fry is:
my end-of-week Fridge Forage meal;
how I (happily) consume a ton of vegetables in one sitting;
something I make with a mix of vegetables – or just one (like snow peas or Asian mushrooms).
I serve it over rice or noodles. I toss noodles into it while cooking. I top homemade Chinese noodle soups with it. And I make instant ramen respectable by piling on this saucy stir fried vegetables.
So I repeat again – 5 years. No recipe. BAFFLED. 🤷🏻♀️
What goes in my Vegetable Stir Fry
You can basically ignore all the vegetables in the photo below, and visualise whatever YOU want to use! Just use the sauce part of my recipe. 🙂
Can I make this with Charlie?
100% yes, you’ll need 4 tablespoons of Charlie and directions are in the recipe below. For new readers, “Charlie” is my ready made All Purpose Chinese Stir Fry Sauce. RTE readers and I love him so much, we’ve named him. He has a shelf life of months, and can be used in 90% of my stir fries and noodles, either outright or with the addition of a few extra flavourings. Try him once, and you’ll be obsessed with him too!
How to make stir fried vegetables
There’s only two rules here:
Have all the ingredients chopped and ready to toss in the wok / skillet because this recipe moves fast once you start cooking!
Don’t let the veggies cook until floppy and sad. They should be vibrant, just cooked so they don’t have the raw bite to them but they’re still a bit crisp. That’s the point of optimum flavour and nutrition for vegetables!
What order to cook vegetables in stir fries
There’s no need to turn this into an exact science! Just start by cooking aromatics to form the flavour base then add vegetables that take the longest to cook first, and delicate things like leafy greens towards the end.
Here’s a rough guide:
Aromatics in first- onion, leeks, garlic, ginger, chilli
Firm vegetables in second – like carrot, capsicum/bell peppers, stems of Asian Greens (Buk Choy in this recipe), zucchini / courgettes, eggplant, asparagus, canned baby corn, green beans, okra.
Quicker cooking vegetables added next- snow peas, kale, cabbage.
Delicate vegetables in last – toss until just wilted. Leaves of Asian Greens, spinach, bean sprouts, green onions, fresh herbs.
Pre cooked vegetables – broccoli, cauliflower and broccolini should be pre-cooked prior to using in a stir fry as they take too long to cook from raw in a stir fry (unless chopped small). And though I rarely use them in stir fries, I also pre cook things like pumpkin, potato, squash, and other root vegetables.
A big skillet of vegetables never looked so tasty!!
Also – the stir fry sauce. I like making plenty of it so it can soak through the rice or noodles, or whatever you serve it over. It’s also particularly good at disguising cauliflower rice – for those of you *trying* to cut down on carbs. 😇
What to serve with Stir Fried Vegetables
This can be served as:
a main dish with rice or noodles (try cauliflower rice for a low carb option); or
a vegetable side dish.
Though this stir fry has Chinese origins, don’t restrict yourself to serving this alongside just Chinese dishes. You’ll see similar version of this sauce used all across Asia. So serve it as a vegetable side the next time you make any Asian dishes – such as Vietnamese, Thai or Japanese! Here are a few suggestions (just a few….😂):
What to serve with Stir Fried Vegetables
Woah. For someone who’s taken so long to share such a *simple* recipe, I sure did have a lot to say about it! 😂 – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
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Saucy Vegetable Stir Fry
Ingredients
- 1 tbsp vegetable oil
- 2 garlic cloves , finely chopped
- 1 tbsp ginger , finely sliced (optional)
- 1/2 onion , peeled and sliced
- 1 carrot , large
- 3 medium buk choy or other leafy greens of choice (Note 1)
- 1 cup mushrooms , sliced 3mm / 1/8″ thick
- 1 capsicum , sliced 1/2cm / 1/5″ thick
Sauce (or use 4 tbsp Charlie, Note 4):
- 1 tbsp cornflour / corn starch
- 1 1/2 tbsp soy sauce , light or all purpose (not dark soy) (Note 2)
- 2 tsp Oyster Sauce
- 1 tbsp Chinese Cooking Wine or Mirin (Note 3)
- 1/2 tsp sesame oil (optional)
- Dash of white pepper (or black)
- 3/4 cup / 185 ml water
Garnishes, optional:
- Finely sliced green onions
- Sesame seeds
Instructions
Vegetable Prep:
- Carrot: cut in half lengthwise then diagonally sliced 2mm / 1/10" thick
- Buk Choy (Note 1): Trim base off, then cut leaves off the stem. Cut the stem lengthwise into 1cm / 2/5" wide pieces. Keep leaves separate from stems, they will be cooked at different times.
Sauce (Charlie – Note 4):
- Place cornflour and soy sauce in a bowl and mix until cornflour is dissolved, then mix in remaining Sauce ingredients.
Cooking:
- Heat oil in a wok or large heavy based skillet over high heat.
- Add garlic and ginger, stir for 10 seconds. Add onion, stir for 30 seconds.
- Add carrot, capsicum and stems of buk choy – stir for 1 minute.
- Add mushrooms, then stir for 2 to 3 minutes until the vegetables are almost cooked.
- Add Sauce and toss for 1 minute until Sauce thickens and becomes glossy, coating all the vegetables. Don't overcook so they become floppy and limp – they should be just cooked, "crisp tender".
- Remove from stove and serve over rice (low carb option: cauliflower rice). Garnish with green onions and sesame seeds if using. A big dollop of chilli sauce wouldn't go astray either!
Recipe Notes:
- Mirin – best, the Japanese equivalent of Chinese cooking wine;
- Dry sherry – next best, any cheap and cheerful dry sherry
- Japanese cooking sake
- Non alcoholic – substitute the water in the recipe with LOW SODIUM chicken stock/broth
Nutrition Information:
Life of Dozer
More Dozer pool action! Well, not so much action here, just Dozer climbing out of the pool. Currently using a ramp because the step in is so high, he actually sprained his lower back with all his crazy leaping in and out.
I know, I know. First World Problems.🙈
I used Almond Flour instead of cornflour in the vegetable stir fry. The sauce didn’t thicken. When using almond flour are you meant to add a larger amount?
Hi Katerina, yes that’s because almond flour reacts differently and won’t thicken sauced like cornflour or regular flour unfortunately. N x
I have used this recipe for about 8 years and is still the best. The sauce is delicious. I usually cook for my family so I double the recipe and it is still delicious. I love it that much that I copied the recipe in to my own recipe book. Thank you so much!
Will substituting red pepper with tomatoes work?
Can one have this dish with egg noodles instead of rice?
This looks so yummy and it’s on my list to try!! Quick question – how to you pre cook broccoli/cauliflower when you use it?
Hi Mandi, you can steam for a minute (either on the stove or microwave) just to take the crunch out of them and let them finish in the wok. N x
This looks great and I want to make it tonight but my daughter would like it a little spicy. What could I add?
Hi Rhonda, a little sriracha to the sauce will add a little kick 🙂 N x
Hey, which brand/kind of oyster sauce do you use? It’s used so much that I want to make sure I have the best possible brand. Thanks!
Hi Travis, this page will assist you here 🙂 https://promotown.info/asian-market-grocery-store-shopping-list/%3C/a%3E N x
🙏🏼 Bless up, thank you 🙏🏼
Can I use Apple juice or Pineapple juice instead of the Chinese cooking wine? Or are there other non-alcoholic substitutes that I can use for Chinese cooking wine? Thank you in advance.
Hi Levi – all the subs are listed in the recipe notes. N x
Nagi, you put my old stir fry recipe to shame! Hahaha! Again, it is simple yet devine! Will try to make Charlie next time!
Made this tonight and it was absolutely delicious – added some Tofu. For someone like me who is not known for cooking skills, your recipes never fail … thank you
Sauce is magic, can I freeze it??
Never fails to impress 🙂 I make this every week. a staple at my place. I do add some chicken or tofu and works a charm. The sauce is divine. Thanks Nagi.
Another amazing recipe of yours. I start believing I can actually cook asian food wow Special thanks from my very grateful husband
I have been making at least one or four of your recipes a week for the last few months
This one was like all the others Delicious
Awww Dozer
I miss our three departed Golden Retrievers and love seeing pictures of Dozer ❤️
My family and I loved this recipe. The sauce was very authentic and delicious. Thank you so much for your wonderful recipes.
I’m sorry to bother you with this question and I totally understand if you don’t have time to answer, but I was wondering if you could help me with vegetable substitutions. This recipe sounds wonderful and I have all the ingredients for the sauce plus the aromatics and have plenty of vegetables – just not bok choy or bell pepper, and now I can’t for the life of me figure out how to substitute totally different kind of vegetables with others. So could you perhaps give me an estimation in weight or volume to determine how much vegetables in all can be used in this recipe? I’d be deeply grateful.
Hi Annik, you could really use any kind of vegetables here – any leafy greens would work in place of the bok Choy and I’d say a cup of another vegetable would be perfect to sub the capsicum. It’s a super saucy dish so no need to be accurate with the vegetables here. N x
Sorry it took me so long to thank you for your answer – I had cortisone injections to my both hands and had to let them rest and recover. Anyway, I cooked this recipe for my family and it was a great hit. I still struggled a bit with subbing the bok choy as I’ve never been lucky enough to see one in the flesh (sadly we don’t get that kind of produce around here where I live) and even googling the subject left me kind of scratching my head. For example Cook’s Info states that you get 5 cups of chopped stalks plus 4 cups of sliced leaves from one big bok choy and even if the medium ones were, say, 1/3 smalled I’d still be dealing with way too much bok choy to work with this recipe I believe. Nevertheless, I took a wild guess with my Chinese cabbage and the results were surprisingly alright. And the sauce was divine! Seriously, it’s SO good! This is definitely going to be cooked over and over again at our house. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe as well as for your kindness and patience with my questions!
Unusual late night cooking for me tonight at 2100hours; but for a simple straight forward veggie stir fry – easy to cook great to eat. Thankful for your recipes. From the Tropical Islands of Fiji.
Hi i have been looking for a quick recipe for stir fry for ages will try this, looking forward to your e books
I hope you love it Roberta! N x
Hi Nagi , looking forward to trying this recipe! Is it possible to add egg tofu into the mix ? Thanks in advance !
This was delicious! I’m trying to eat more vegetarian meals and I just got my vegetable box delivered – this tasted even better than a similar vegie stir fry I had in a restaurant last week. I know I should know by now, but I’m always astonished at how easy and tasty all your recipes are – every single one! How do you do it? You’re a genius. Thanks!