Making Stir-Fry Is Like Herding Cats

Every time I turn around, there’s a new stir-fry recipe, claiming to be so quick! So easy!

I call baloney.

You’ll never be able to convince me that making stir-fry isn’t a bit like herding cats, which everyone fortunate enough to have a feline overlord knows is impossible.

I have enough of that in my life because I work with software developers all day. I also live with an artist and, well, two very stubborn cats. You catch my drift.

Don’t get me wrong — I love stir-fry. All those deliciously crisp-tender vegetables? You can practically feel the nutrients coursing through your body.

But the people who say stir-fry is easy probably have tools I don’t possess, skills I lack, and a mental acuity I simply can’t fathom when it’s time to make dinner.

First, there’s all that chopping. I don’t know about you, but after a rough day at work, I’m not sure I should be trusted with a knife in my hand. It might not be the safest thing (for me or those around me, depending on my mood).

While I’m not exactly known for fancy blade skills, I’m not too shabby either. But cutting up all those vegetables takes forever unless I had the foresight to pre-chop on Sunday afternoon (and then, some well-meaning foodie will probably tell me that the flavor and nutrients will be compromised by the time I’m ready to cook a few days later).

Second, you need the right pan. Without a reasonably good pan, you might as well order takeout.

My favorite wok is off-limits currently. It is incompatible with the glass-top electric stove that will be the bane of my existence until it’s time to renovate the kitchen and get the gas hooked up again.

I’ve had many nonstick skillets over the years. Some were decent, to begin with, but didn’t stay that way for very long. Others released food about as well as your car released that political bumper sticker from 2016 that you tried to scrape off before you sold it.

My current set (which has a little square pattern that’s supposed to prevent the food from sticking) falls into the latter group, so I don’t know why I even bother with it.

I have a heavy-bottomed steel skillet that I love, but it has straight, deep sides which are not at all ideal for stir-frying. My older non-stick skillets are peeling, and I need to just toss them because I don’t want whatever that is to end up in our food.

Years ago, we bought an electric wok for my parents when their stove didn’t accommodate a regular wok either. My dad wasn’t a huge stir-fry fan (too many vegetables!), so it eventually came to live with me.

During a recent crisis with the abhorrent nonstick skillet I mentioned above, I finally located that electric wok, in a high cupboard above a utility closet. That should tell you how frequently it’s been used in the past few years, but it’s certainly better than my other options.

Finally, there’s the process itself. Once you’re ready to start cooking, you’d better have all your ingredients ready, and within reach, because stir-frying is not for the slow or the faint of heart. If your pan or wok is good and hot, which it should be, you won’t have time to walk across the kitchen to grab something out of the fridge.

Unless I’m feeling super-focused, I tend to wind up with some things cooked more than I wanted, others cooked less than I like, and me more stressed than I should be.

What it comes down to, though, isn’t that I’m incapable of making a proper stir-fry. I cooked in restaurants for years. I know how to run a line.

But these days my entire existence feels hectic, frenzied, frantic, and when it comes time to make dinner, I don’t need more of the same.

I’m more about slow simmers, braises, casseroles, and things that are roasted — or that can be entirely prepped in advance. Fortunately, as summer eases into fall, these types of dishes feel more appropriate.

Sure, it might take a little longer to get dinner on the table, but that’s time I can spend with a glass of wine and the latest copy of the New Yorker.

It’s time I can finally hit pause and come up for air.