Burmese · Sauce
Kyet Thun Ni Kyaw
- Easy
- 30 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
- Vegetarian
- Vegan
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, with a bitter-edged char at the rim.
Ingredients
- 400 g red shallots, peeled
- 350 ml peanut oil
- 3 g salt
Equipment
Wok
The skills inside
Wok techniqueResting meat & slicing against the grain
Allergen screen
Found: nuts · peanuts
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Slice the shallots across the grain at an even 2 mm; a thick slice is still wet when a thin one has burnt.
- Put shallots and cold oil into a wok together and set it over medium heat; bring it only to a lazy, even fizz, never a roar.
- Stir every minute or two for 20 to 25 minutes; the loud bubbling of escaping water quietens to a whisper as the shallots go from white to straw. 25 min
- Lift them out with a spider while they are still pale gold and spread them on a rack in one layer; they darken a full shade off the heat.
- Salt the shallots only once they are cold and crisp, and bottle the cooled oil on its own.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Wok technique 28 recipes
- Everything went in dry and went in in order. Wet protein or wet vegetables drop the wok below the heat that browns, and what follows is a stew in a round pan however hard the burner is working.
- The wok stays loud from the first moment to the last. A wok that falls quiet has been overloaded, and the food in it is now boiling in its own liquid.
- Every piece is coated and glossy with no pooled sauce in the bottom of the dish: the sauce should cling by reduction and starch, not sit under the food.
- Vegetables keep their colour and a bite at the centre. Grey-green greens or a limp stem mean too long in the pan, and nothing later in the dish recovers them.
- It carries the faint scorched note that only comes from food touching metal above about 200C, distinct from bitterness, which means the aromatics were burnt and is a different failure entirely.
Where it goes wrong Too much went in at once, or it went in wet. The wok loses its heat, the food releases water and simmers, the sauce thins instead of clinging, and the dish arrives pale and slack with liquid pooling under it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Grüner Veltliner
- Also Right
- Vermentino or dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Saison
- Zero-Proof
- Sparkling water with citrus & herbs
The vegetable whisperers: peppery, high-acid whites that flatter greens, roots, and grains without bullying them.
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