Wok hei is a bit of a you-know-it-when-you-taste-it thing. It’s often translated to “breath of the wok”, and is – according to Lee Ho Fook chef Victor Liong – best described as “that signature charred flavour you get from cooking in a wok”.

You can easily taste it in restaurant dishes, but while stir-fries are one of the simplest meals to make for yourself, the smoky flavour is notoriously hard to achieve at home.

It’s not impossible, though. We got Liong to share his tips for making restaurant-quality stir-fries at home, and it all comes down to three things: ingredients, heat and moisture.

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Follow the 1-1-1 rule

“The tricky part [with stir-fries] is it’s about vegetable selection,” says Liong. It’s important to consider the moisture content and cooking requirements of vegetables when deciding what to combine. He recommends a 1-1-1 rule: rather than combining three watery vegetables – “that becomes more of a braise” – choose one vegetable with a high moisture content like zucchini; one, such as snow peas, that will always stay crunchy; and a third that sits in the middle, with gai lan (Chinese broccoli) as an example.

Go for induction

“It’s almost impossible to achieve [wok hei] in a gas setting,” Liong says. Asian stir-fries require a lot of heat. “In a wok that’s suitable for the gas ring, as soon as you put the vegetables in, the temperature just drops.”

The easiest way to be sure you’ll get the heat you need is to use induction. Using an induction stove – even a good-quality portable one – and flat-bottom wok minimises heat loss and the heat bounces back faster compared to cooking with a typical at-home gas burner. “It’s all about contact,” he adds. “In a vegetable stir-fry, the heat coming back to the wok quickly is what keeps it vibrant, crunchy, green and restaurant-quality.”

Use a salad spinner

Too much water is the death of stir-fries. To avoid unintentionally braising vegetables, Liong says his move is to dry vegetables, and sometimes even noodles, in a salad spinner before adding them to the wok.

Heat your wok, then add oil

“If you heat the oil from cold up until it starts smoking, like a lot of recipes say, the metal wok heats to a higher degree than the oil does, so you end up burning your oil,” Liong says. Instead of putting oil into a cold wok, he recommends heating the wok, then adding oil and swirling it around to coat the metal before you start cooking to prevent other ingredients from burning and sticking.

Microwave your veg (and some noodles)

For “woodier” vegetables like broccoli or carrots that take longer to cook than leafy greens, Liong recommends pre-cooking them in the microwave before stir-frying. “I ping them in the microwave with a splash of water,” he says. “If you blanche, it’s too wet, but I just put it in a container, sit some water on top, put the lid on and put it in the microwave for about a minute and a half so it’s three-quarters cooked, hot and not too wet.”

Work your way up

If you’re scared of cooking over a really high heat like the kind you get from an induction stovetop, Liong recommends practising and working your way up. “It’s all practice,” he says. “There’re one or two bulletproof things you can stir-fry that, in a hot or not-that-hot wok, you’re not going to ruin.” Tomato and egg, mushrooms, or white cabbage stir-fries are hard things to mess up, so Liong recommends wok cookery novices practise with these dishes before moving to more advanced dishes like char kway teow.

This article is produced by Broadsheet in partnership with the Global Cooksafe Coalition.