Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Beef and Broccoli

I sort of suck at stir fries. "Suck" might be a bit strong. I also suck at cake baking, and by "suck" I mean I don't do it often enough to innovate. I have to sort of cling to whatever recipe I have because I don't know enough to do anything else, and I know if I deviate I'll break the thing.

The thing is I have great cake recipes and maybe not so great stir fry recipes. Well, that's not quite true either. I do have great stir fry recipes but from an enormous and very authentic Mandarin cookbook which needs ingredients like sow blood and moon pepper. Someday I will make something according to a recipe in this cookbook and it will be amazing, but it will require an independent trip to the oriental grocery and a lot of gesturing. So I have generally used Betty Crocker stir fry recipes, which were, well, they were OK, but without enough soy or ginger to really punch through the middle-America barrier. The Betty Crocker cookbook is amazingly consistent in how good its recipes are, but in the stir fry department it really wants to stay in its comfort zone, which happens to be right in the middle of a vat of mac and cheese at a church social in Arkansas.

So I got a request for stir fry. Complicating things is an impending move which requires me to make use of existing ingredients, and I had some beef chuck and some frozen broccoli I needed to get rid of. So I found a beef broccoli that worked really, really well. I didn't have flank so I sliced the chuck roast very fine and it went fantastically, the fattier cut making a much more beefy, velvety sauce. I also didn't have red bell peppers or scallions, and I subbed rehydrated garlic for fresh where needed, as well as some other things. Before you scoff, yes, garlic powder works fine, it just needs to be rehydrated in water before it is added to other ingredients.

.5 pound chuck, sliced into 1/8" slices or as thin as you can get it.
1.5 tablespoons soy sauce
1.5 teaspoons marsala
.5 tsp chicken base or bullion
1 tablespoon water
2.5 tablespoons oyster sauce
1.5 teaspoons sugar
.5 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
.5 teaspoon cornstarch
1 tsp red pepper flakes
1 tbsp garlic powder, rehydrated in 1 tbsp water
2 tsp minced ginger
Some oil
14 oz frozen broc florets
1 cup rice, 2 cups water, a bit of salt, a  bit of oil


1. Combine beef and soy sauce in medium bowl; cover with plastic wrap and refrigerate at least 10 minutes or up to 1 hour, stirring once. Meanwhile, whisk next 8 ingredients in measuring cup as sauce mixture. Combine garlic, ginger, and 1/2 teaspoon peanut oil in small bowl. Cook broccoli in microwave for 3 minutes or as directed on package. Start the rice on another burner.
2. Drain beef and discard liquid. Heat 2 teaspoons peanut oil in 12-inch nonstick skillet over high heat until smoking. Add beef to skillet and break up clumps; cook, without stirring, for 1 minute, then stir and cook until beef is browned around edges, about 30 seconds. Transfer beef to medium bowl.
3. Add 2 teaspoons peanut oil to now-empty skillet; heat until just smoking. Add broccoli and cook 30 seconds or until browned, remove and place aside with beef ( I used the same bowl for that). Add a bit more oil, let it heat, then add garlic and ginger and cook, mashing mixture with spoon, until fragrant, 15 to 20 seconds. Return beef and broccoli to skillet and toss to combine. Whisk sauce to recombine, then add to skillet; cook, stirring constantly, until sauce is thickened and evenly distributed, about 30 seconds. Take off the heat and serve over rice. If you have some scallions chop them and scatter over each serving.

Serves 2, but it scales pretty well so long as you don't try and do more than 1 lb of beef at a time. Remember to not crowd the pan when browning meat or you get steamed meat instead of browned meat.

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