Chinese food can be greasy, particularly if the frying oil isn’t hot enough. Particularly breaded items can soak up their weight in oil. You could eat only fresh, uncooked vegetables, but that get’s old.
There is a middle way: Dry frying.
Dry-frying is a popular and healthy way to cook fish or meat. It is also used to bring out the flavor of whole spices, seeds or nuts. But it’s best used to cook vegetables. The basic technique is to cook with no oil, for a fatty piece of meat, or very little oil, for vegetables. Rub two tablespoons of oil into the sides of the pan, just enough to keep the food from sticking as you stir constantly over a medium to high flame. Cook only a small batch of vegetables at the time. The water content of the vegetables must be driven off, rather than pool in the bottom of the pan. At the end, the food looks dried out.
Dry frying is associated with Sichuan Province in Southwestern China. Sichuan is the "Province of Abundance," with much of the agricultural production. They are proud of their cooking, one of the “Four Great Traditions” of Chinese cuisine. A famous Sichuan chef Chen Kenichi, was “Iron Chef” Chinese on television. The most prominent traits of this cookery are described by four words: spicy, hot, fresh and fragrant. Various spellings complicate things; Szechuan, Szechwan, or Sichuan.
Dry fried green beans are a Szechwan classic, perhaps the most famous vegetable dish. The green beans are cooked over a medium heat until they are tender and slightly wrinkled, as in the photo above from Delicious Kabob on Shallowford Road. (Author's note: Sadly, this restaurant closed in Oct 2009) Many restaurants deep-fry first to reduce the cooking time, so if you get an oily tasting “dry fry” this could be the reason. If you want to minimize the oiliness when cooking at home, steam or boil the beans to cook them through before starting. This is a good recipe from About.com for dry fried green beans. This technique works well with other vegetables, like dry fried eggplant, my favorite vegetable dish at Delicious Kabob. These dishes are also available at Café 101 and Little Szechuan.
Atlanta area native, Alton Brown, demonstrates how to cook okra three ways: wet fry, dry fry and as stew.
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