Your Stir-Fried Shrimp Will Taste Better With One Simple Step

Short on time and still need a delicious, healthy meal? Stir-fry is your friend. MasterClass explains that the cooking technique is Chinese in origin, though you can find stir-fry dishes all over the world. Stir-fry happens in a wok, where ingredients are cooked over high heat while frequently tossed to keep them from scorching. Simple components like fresh vegetables and protein like beef, chicken, shrimp, and tofu are typically cut small and uniform in size, so everything cooks quickly and evenly.

MasterClass also lays out the essential components of a stir-fry: sauce, vegetables, protein, noodles or rice, oil, and garnish. And The Woks of Life explains that extra care may need to be taken to ensure that every ingredient in your stir-fry comes out of the wok cooked to perfection. For example, you may need to blanch some vegetables if they require more cooking time than a delicate ingredient like shrimp. To that end, preparing a quick and delicious shrimp stir-fry the right way is easy.

Shrimp is such a versatile ingredient, and its quick cooking time makes it the perfect go-to for busy cooks. However, there's a fine line between perfectly cooked, succulent shrimps and tough, rubbery shrimps that have been overcooked. Serious Eats has the solution, though, for any cooking method you choose. Before you cook your shrimp, brine the protein briefly in salt and baking soda; use 1 teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon baking soda for every pound of shrimp. Toss the shrimp with the salt and baking soda and refrigerate them for about 15 minutes.

Once you've brined your shrimp, you'll be able to achieve a beautifully moist protein with a lovely firm texture when you're ready to stir-fry. You can choose a recipe that's a bit unusual for a change, like this shrimp and rhubarb stir-fry, or you can savor a more traditional shrimp pad Thai. Whichever stir-fry recipe you decide to go for, cook your brined shrimp just until they've traded their translucent color for that perfect pink.