10 stir fry sauce recipes

Who doesn’t love a good stir fry. They’re quick and easy to prepare and are handy for making use of any meat or vegetables you might have lying around. Plus they are guaranteed to satisfy even the most rapacious dinner guests. Here’s a few basic recipes for stir fry sauces, use them a starting point, for inspiration or great just as they are.

The instructions for all of these are simple… just combine the ingredients in a small bowl, stir well to combine, then add to your stir fry. At the bottom there a some great tips.

Sweet and sour stir fry sauce

Lemon stir fry sauce

Great with seafood stir fries, such as shrimp and/or scallops, as well as chicken

Soy sesame stir fry sauce

Good all-round Asian sauce, suitable for all proteins.

How to make a basic stir fry sauce

Good all-round sauce.

Hot and sour stir fry sauce

Good all-round sauce.

Thai stir fry sauce

Great with chicken or shrimp.

Peanut stir fry sauce

Perfect for noodles or chicken.

Orange stir fry sauce

Nice with chicken and pork.

Spicy orange stir fry sauce

Great with chicken!

Spicy Szechuan stir fry sauce

Great all-round spicy stir fry sauce.

Tips:

1. Some of these sauces already have cornstarch added but if they don’t, you can use this to thicken any sauce that you think is too thin. Simply combine 1 Tbsp. cornstarch with 3 Tbsp. water and stir until the cornstarch is dissolved. Add a bit, stir and cook until sauce thickens. Add more as necessary.
2. Consider using low-sodium chicken broth and soy sauce to avoid an overly-salty finished dish.
3. Each of these sauces makes 1/2 – 1 cup of stir fry sauce. You may not need it all, depending on the amount of meat, noodles and/or vegetables you are stir frying. Add as necessary to make it as saucy as you like and thicken with the thickener above, if desired. Of course, you can also double the sauce if you’re making a lot of stir fry.
4. Some of these sauces already contain things like minced garlic, ginger, onion or chillis (or other heat) but if they don’t, be sure to consider adding some into your stir fry.
5. Everyone’s tastes are different so you will likely want to tweak the sauces to your tastes. If you print out the list, you can simply make notes as you go to develop your perfect sauce.