Pizzas galore!

A good trick is to cut all the meat to the same size – this ensures that the pieces cook in the same time and retain some of their juices.This same principle also applies to vegetables. For leafy vegetables, cut them on the diagonal – this exposes them to more heat in the wok and they will cook more rapidly.

2. Choosing the right oil

Most oils with a high heating point are great, such as sunflower oil, groundnut oil and vegetable oil, but try to avoid sesame oil as this has a low heating point and burns quickly – save this for seasoning your dishes. Olive oil isn’t ideal as it imparts an olive flavour that does not suit all Chinese dishes (although I have used it in one or two) so it’s best to use a flavourless oil. My favourite is groundnut oil as it has a slight nutty aroma that is not strong enough to overpower a dish but acts as a great base on which to create the layers of flavours in a dish.

3. The correct heat

Char siu pork on steamed pak choy and sweet orange sauce

Ching adapts a friend's dish and gives it a honey citrus bite

• Ken Hom's Top 10 authentic Chinese dishes

• Ching-He Huang: the new Chinese takeaway

Pork and bamboo shoot stir fry

TV chef Ching-He Huang cooks the first of six easy-to-make authentic Chinese dishes using healthy ingredients

UK's top 20 Chinese restaurants

Celebrate the Chinese new year with Square Meal's best restaurants in the UK; plus recipes from Times cooks and writers

Top 10 basic ingredients for Chinese cooking

Watch Ching dispense essential tips for Chinese cooking as she selects her store-cupboard ingredients

• Ching-He Huang: healthy Chinese recipes

Related Links

• She's a wok star

Prepare the wok for stir-frying by heating it to a high heat and then add the oil and swirl it around in the wok. When the wok starts to smoke you know it’s ready to use. During the cooking process, keep an eye on the flame and level of heat in the wok – you want it high enough so that it sears the food but you do not want to burn the ingredients.You may need to adjust the flame because the temperature will fall in the wok once the ingredients have been added.

4. Order of ingredients and timing

Add the Chinese essentials such as garlic, ginger and chillies first. Secondly, add the meat or seafood, and then, lastly, the vegetables, with a few sprinkles of water to help create steam. This order of cooking helps to retain the bite of the vegetables. An important note to remember is to dry the ingredients before you add them to the wok or the oil will spit, and if there is too much moisture, the ingredients stew rather than ‘fry’. When you make a saucy stir-fry and use meats marinated in sauces, just hold back the marinade until the very end of the stir-frying process to make sure it doesn’t all evaporate, and again you don’t want to stew the food.

A popular technique in the kitchens of Chinese restaurants is to first cook the meat/protein and then scoop it out while the vegetables are stir-fried.The meat/protein is then returned to the wok for the final mixing with seasoning. In the home, I find that you don’t always have to cook in this way (as recipes vary), and there are certain dishes where you can add the meat/protein after the garlic, ginger and chillies and then once they start to cook, you can add the rest of the ingredients; this helps to ensure the meat/protein is not overly cooked and you can get away with it. So timing is important in wok cooking – knowing when the ingredient is ready for seasoning and when to add other ingredients.Work with what is best for you, practise makes perfect!

5. Adding cooked ingredients

Cooked noodles/cooked rice can be added at the end and combined with the rest of the ingredients together with all the seasoning.

Chinese Food Made Easy starts on BBC Two on July 7. The book Chinese Food Made Easy, by Ching-He Huang (Harper Collins, £16.99), is available at £15.29, free p&p. Phone 0870 1608080; timesonline.co.uk/booksfirstbuy

For more information on Ching visit her website

Times Recommends

• Jane MacQuitty’s party wine
• Oliver Peyton's Christmas pavlova
• Blood orange cosmopolitan