The telly chef and cookery book writer knows a thing or two about making a decent stir-fry.

How many of us have lumped for a supermarket stir-fry mix, complete with sickly packet sauce, dumped it all in a wok, burned the bottom, and wished we'd just ordered in chow mein? We're betting this happens a lot.

But it doesn't have to be that way. In her new cookbook, Stir Crazy, TV chef, foodie entrepreneur and Chinese cookery aficionado Ching-He Huang has come up with 100 stir-fry recipes that won't involve dry, frazzled chicken and limp beansprouts.

You can't beat a stir-fry for speed

"We are living in a fast-paced world and time is of the essence," she says, explaining why our obsession with flash-fried noodles and crunchy veg isn't likely to wane. "They're quick, accessible, speedy and non-threatening - you don't need a lot of fancy kitchen equipment."

However, despite how quick and easy they are, in the West, we're still prone to messing up our stir-fries.

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

"Every element of that process needs its own time," she says, making rapid-stir frying sound more therapeutic than manic.

"Be mindful that having all the ingredients prepped beforehand helps," 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."

Now is the time to assess our meat consumption

It's not just ease and speed that attracts Ching to stir-fries. For the north-London based cookery book writer, it's a dish that offers myriad health benefits, variety ("It's not just your hoisin sauce or your oyster sauce"), and feeds into sustainability. Half the recipes in Stir Crazy are vegetarian and vegan, and when meat does feature, it makes up no more than 20% of a dish.

"In Chinese restaurants, the majority of the dishes are meat-based, but traditionally in Chinese cooking and culture, it was 80% vegetable based and meat was only a luxury," says Ching, explaining that she wanted to return to those roots. "It's really about the quality of ingredients, not quantity, and you get what you give from the planet. Unfortunately, we're taking a lot more than we're giving [at the moment].

"We need to cut down on our meat consumption, we all need to."

Food is medicine as well as fuel

For Ching, food is as much about eating well as it is about taking care of yourself. "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.

"What nature gives us is perfect," she says, remembering the pale-fleshed sugar loaf pineapples with edible stalks that she ate on a recent trip to Hawaii. "Our body is perfect too, if we treat it right - everything works in harmony, if we give it a chance."

  • 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.