Pork and Wood Ear Mushroom Stir Fry

Healthy and delicious pork and wood ear stir fry (木耳炒肉) is not so complex and luxurious as woo shu pork, but it is much simpler to prepare. Though it may takes a little bit time to cutting, the stir-frying process only takes less than 10 minutes.

What’s Wood Ear Mushrooms

Wood ear mushroom is a type of edible fungus grown in China and popular in Chinese cuisine. Since it is grown on the woods and looks like ears, people named it as wood ear mushrooms.
Most of the wood ear mushrooms are black or dark brown. So there is a universal name black wood ear mushrooms. They can be harvested either in Spring season or in Autumn. They grow on elder trees and has a large ear like shape. The two spices are different in texture. Check wood ear mushroom for inspirations of using, how to storage and etc.

What type to choose for this stir fry

I recommend using regular wood ear mushroom (毛木耳) generally is larger than black fungus with a lighter brown color. But two two types can be used alternatively for sure.

How to avoid splashing

If you ever fried wood ear mushroom in a wok, the “pa pa pa” sound might be quite impressing. It will cause small bursts and further splashing will happen. We don’t want to get hurt in kitchen. So there must be something done to avoid this. The solution is quite simple, cook the wood ear mushroom firstly in boiling water and avoid long time stir frying.

Instructions

1.Rehydrate Wood Ear Mushroom
Firstly wash the them for 2 or 3 times and soak with warm water for 15 minutes or cold water for 1 hour.
2. Clean and trim the mushrooms
After soaking, the wood ear mushrooms need to be re-washed carefully and remove the hard end part. Some bad quality wood ear mushroom may contain lots of sands, which will further spoil your dish.
3. Blanching the wood ear mushroom in hot water
Add a small pinch of salt in hot boiling water and then cook wood ear mushroom for 1 minute. Transfer out and drain completely.

How to velvet pork

The most important part for meat stir frying is to marinating process. In order to velvet pork for stir fry, the authentic Chinese way don’t involve baking soda. If the marinating is not well done, you will end up with dry, chewy and plaint pork slices after stir frying. To make the pork tender, we have two important steps.

1. Add enough liquid to make the pork slices juicy themselves. So grasping is the key step. We need to make sure  the liquid completely absorbed.
2. Use cornstarch to form a protecting shell to prevent pork slices from loosing the liquid. And adding a small batch of cold oil can help them from sticky to the bottom of the wok.

So following is the basic steps to follow

• Thinly slice the pork. Add salt, cooking wine, white pepper and light soy sauce. Grasp (sometimes referred as messaging), the pork will get a sticky texture after 2 minutes grasping. Then add water (ginger and scallion water is the best), then continue mixing until the water is well absorbed.
• Add cornstarch to lock the liquid. Set aside for 10 to 15 minutes to let the flavors combined.
• Add cold oil and mix well to separate each piece of pork slices. This can prevent the pork slices sticky to bottom of the wok.

Heat wok or pan firstly. Add cooking oil to form a 2-3 cm high layer (do not be scared by the oil amount, we do not eat them all). Spread the pork sliced in when the oil begins to warm but not hot. Let them stay for around 5-8 seconds and then quickly fry them until turns pale. Transfer out immediately.

It is 100% ok to find there are some faint pink color inside the slices based on the following two reasons. Firstly the heat of the pork slices will continue cooking them (后热效应) and secondly they will be recooked in wok later.  Transfer out as long as they turns pale, don’t overcook them.

Remove the extra oil (can be saved to make vegetable stir frying). Keep around 1 tablespoon of oil and fry garlic and pepper until aromatic. Place blanched wood ear mushrooms. Add pinch of salt and light soy sauce. Mix well.

Return pork slices in. Quickly toss to mix well and serve hot! Don’t over stir at this stage, the mushrooms and vegetables may scratch the starch layer off, which may cause the overcook of the pork slices. This rule applies to other meat stir fry dishes too.

If you love to make quick meat stir fry, remember to check the following recipes too.

1. Pork and pepper stir fry
2. Pork stir fry with black bean sauce
3. Pork and mushroom stir fry
4. Pork and Chinese scallion stir fry
5. Yu Xiang shredded pork stir fry