A Chinese cookery expert and telly chef wants you to know you’ve (probably) been making stir-fry wrong.

Apparently the recipe for success isn’t just throwing lumps of chicken breast into a wok with a pack of chopped veg and some sickly sauce, then cooking it all until the meat’s dry and the beansprouts are limp.

A bowl of soggy, bland food isn’t the goal – who knew?

Fortunately, foodie entrepreneur Ching-He Huang has a new cookbook called Stir Crazy out featuring 100 stir-fry recipes and she’s offering some top tips on getting the dish right.

Firstly, you need to avoid messing it up right from the start.

Taiwan-born Ching, 38, says: "People add everything in at once and hope for the best, but really, the simple message is that every ingredient needs its time.

"That's the beauty of stir-frying, you heat the wok up to a really high heat, then you add the oil - when you swish the oil around it creates even heat distribution.

"Then you add garlic, ginger, chillies - the holy trinity - and I always love to add all three, because why not? They need a few seconds, then add your protein or crunchier vegetables, carrots first, then let everything settle and caramelise on one side, saute, then turn and toss to cook; season and serve.”

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Three cup chicken from Stir Crazy by Ching He-Huang

Secondly, it helps to get your ingredients ready before you start.

She adds: "That's where people go wrong, because they think, 'I'll chop and just chuck it in', but if you do that, you burn whatever's in the wok."

Next, it’s quality rather than quantity of the meat that counts.

Half the recipes in Stir Crazy are vegetarian and vegan, and when meat does feature, it makes up no more than 20 per cent of a dish.

Ching says: "In Chinese restaurants, the majority of the dishes are meat-based, but traditionally in Chinese cooking and culture, it was 80 per cent vegetable-based and meat was only a luxury.”

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Spicy honey garlic prawns with water chestnuts from Stir Crazy by Ching He-Huang

The final and slightly cringe-worthy ingredient is to put heart (figuratively not literally) into your cooking, seeing food as medicine and not just quick fuel.

Ching says: "Traditionally in Chinese culture, food is medicine - we've always believed you heal yourself through what you eat."

Raw foods are considered cleansing and able to help detoxify the body, cooked foods are nourishing and when lightly sauteed or steamed, nutrients are unlocked and food is more easily digested, then there are healing foods - like goji berries, shitake mushrooms and ginseng, "which are eaten occasionally when the body needs it to heal itself”.

"You need to cleanse, you need to detox, you need to nourish and you need to heal," says Ching with feeling, noting that it's all about balance.

Stir Crazy: 100 Deliciously Healthy Stir-fry Recipes by Ching He-Huang, photography by Tamin Jones, is published by Kyle Books, priced £19.99. Available now.