Let’s face it: life without fried foods would be no fun. Globally, we’d have no egg rolls, taquitos, tempura, plantain chips, or fried chicken. The good news is that frying methods (from stir-fry to deep-fry) can be more fuel-efficient than boiling or baking, though they’re not without some green drawbacks.
To understand frying, you have to know about fats. Fats conduct heat amazingly well, far better than water (which is in turn better than air). Vegetable oil, for instance, has about half the heat capacity of water, so it heats up quicker and can be raised to higher temperatures.
But in the never-ending trade-off of greener cookprints, most cooking fats are oils pressed from growing plants, nuts, or seeds. They’re renewable, but they still require resources and processing to create them. Higher up the food chain, fats also come from animals (as in pork lard, chicken schmaltz, or butter from dairy cows). Fats cook quickly, but they can also release particles into the air, and the need to dispose of spent grease properly drains a bit off their lean, green profile.
The term frying collectively includes stir-frying, sautéing, shallow frying, and deep-fat frying. Some frying uses no added fat (relying on the natural fat of the food itself). Not to be confusing, but the term pan frying can mean shallow frying or sautéing, and stir-fries can be fried in a pan, too.
Moving from brightest green to the paler green methods, here’s a rundown of frying strategies, all of which use less fuel than an oven.
Stir-frying
If more people stir-fried, the world would be a greener place.A wok-cooked stir-fry wins at fuel-efficient cooking, beating out boiling as well as all other frying methods.
In fact, most global cuisines make their own style of stir-fries, so the method goes far beyond Asian foods. Although this ancient Chinese method doesn’t demand a wok (a skillet works fine), a wok’s unique concave shape makes the most efficient use of the flame.
Essentially, you need really high heat, a pan that conducts heat well (and withstands high temperatures), very little oil, oil with a high smoking point, and sometimes a lid (often with added liquid, to finish cooking). One caveat: woks were designed to sit on a ring over a true flame; today’s electric cooktops have led to flatbased woks, which are still highly efficient. Because of the high heat needed for stir-fries, avoid nonstick-coated pans.
Most of the energy spent in stir-fries comes from you, the cook: food must be cut into small enough pieces to cook quickly and evenly (but there are shortcuts to this, mentioned below). After you’ve done the chopping, a stir-fried meal can take less than five minutes of fuel to actually cook, and as little as a tablespoon or so of oil.
Getting into Global Stir-Fries
If stir-frying is so good, why don’t more people do it? I believe that for most cooks, the biggest obstacles lie in the chopping, long ingredient lists, a need for specialty condiments and sauces (like bean paste or oyster sauce), and when improvising, the brain-stress of deciding what flavor combinations go together. Plus, most folks assume stir-fries have to be Asian. Wrong. Toss all of these preconceptions aside to open up a bigger world of energy-efficient, wok-style cooking.
Chop Shop
If chopping foods is your idea of drudgery, pick ingredients that need little or no chopping, like shrimp, shelled nuts, snow peas, or grape tomatoes. Here is one simple recipe that you can try :Stir-Fried Noodles with Shrimp
Also, chop a little more than you need every time you chop, and save the extra for a stir-fry later in the week (previously blanched vegetables also increase the inventory). If you’ve been putting your fridge and freezer to good use, you’ll make a fabulous dinner in minutes.
With a little forethought while prepping Monday and Tuesday meals, by Wednesday you can end up with precut, ready-to-use vegetables (green onions, carrots, green beans, broccoli); proteins (meat, poultry, sausages, bacon, shrimp, and tofu); toasted almonds, pine nuts, or other nuts; black beans or chickpeas from the freezer; and leftover rice or grains as a side dish or mix-in.
Size Matters
But not as much as you may think. As long as everything’s about the same size and is small enough to cook fairly quickly, the main ingredients don’t have to be bite-size-they can be as small as peas or as plump as jalape?os, fine as matchsticks or as thick as your thumb. Smaller ingredients cook quicker, but even larger stir-fry ingredients cook more efficiently than in other methods.
