The first recipe I cooked from Lopez-Alt's The Wok was the Velvet Chicken with Snap Peas and Lemon-Ginger Sauce.

I had heard of but never tried the “velveting” technique. It is a means to keep lean meat from drying out by marinating the meat in a mixture of egg whites, cornstarch, and water-based liquids. Then the meat is parcooked in oil or water before finishing in a stir-fry. The downside is that the meat does not brown very well.

By all accounts, the velveting worked! The chicken was very tender. I thought the flavors were delicate. For the life of me, I cannot get all of the strings out of snap peas. Other than that, I thought it was tasty. The kids ate the chicken but not the snap peas.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.