A post/recipe from my friend Heather:
Here’s the thing about my adventures into Asian cuisine. I’m married to a Korean-American man whose mother stopped cooking when he was in middle school. He has memories of her food, but mostly he has nostalgic feelings for Chinese take out. And Korean restaurants. He has stories about traveling internationally with his parents, and where ever they were, they went out for bulgogi. Paris, Rome, Riyad. He has the pictures to prove it.
So I feel like I’m competing with a whole retinue of chefs of varying abilities whenever I attempt a staple of some Asian cuisine at home. Luckily, we’ve lived near a great Asian market our entire (short) married life, so I’ve had some help.
Here’s my recipe for beef and broccoli, such as it is. Think, homemade, folks.
Beef and Broccoli
Ingredients:
1 onion
1 red pepper
1 pound broccoli
minced fresh ginger
1 cup rice
2 cups chicken broth
1 lb flank steak
for the marinade:
sesame oil
oyster sauce
soy sauce
red chili garlic sauce
rice wine
minced garlic
1. First put on your rice to steam. I toast my rice first in the pot, which simply means I put the burner on high, pour my cup of rice into the pot and leave it on the burner for 2 or 3 minutes until the rice takes on a little color.
Toasting Rice
2. Then I add two cups of chicken broth, cover, and cook on medium-low for twenty minutes.
3. While the rice is cooking I make a marinade for the meat. I don’t use measurements really, I just pretend I’m making a barbeque sauce, and add a little of all my marinade ingredients to the bowl.That’s probably not helpful.
Marinade Ingredients
4. I slice up the meat I’m using, generally flank or skirt steak, into sort of bite size slices.Then I stir add it to the marinade and mix well to cover all the meat.
Marinating Steak
5. While the meat sits, I turn to my vegetables. I only use two or three vegetables at a time in my stir fries because I want to showcase them. This dish is all about broccoli, so I use red pepper to offset the broccoli in color and texture, and onion because that’s simply a staple. Broccoli and carrot might work nicely, too.
Pretty vegetables. So pretty.
5b. Cut your vegetables all roughly the same size so they cook the same amount of time. Also this is aesthetically pleasing, which shouldn’t be under-estimated in Chinese cooking.
Roughly the same size
6. Once your vegetables are ready, heat a skillet over medium-high heat. Use about 2 tablespoons of oil. I use olive oil for almost everything I cook, but here I might use peanut oil because it stands up better to heat, and it’s not as distinctly flavored as olive.
7. Stir fry your vegetables until tender-crisp. With these, because of their size, that took almost ten minutes.
Stir fry until tender-crisp.
8. Remove vegetables from pan and add beef. I usually add the entire bowl, as this cooks the marinade as a sauce. Beef has a high water content, so it will release a lot of liquid into the sauce. Don’t worry.
Separate cooking times.
9. Once the beef is cooked through, I add the vegetables back into the skillet and stir to coat.
10. Serve with more chili garlic and soy sauce.
4 Comments
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Jen
My husband thanks you.
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Jessica
I’m definitely going to have Josh make this.
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Heathermommy
That picture of the veggies was so beautiful. I am afraid of oyster sauce. Can you ease my fears?
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HK
http://chinesefood.about.com/od/glossary/g/oystersauce.htm
That has an adequate description of oyster sauce. It reminds me of steak sauce, but made with “oyster extract.” Mine straight from the bottle tastes rather wheaty, than oystery. My palate is not developed enough to tell you what happens if you leave it out, but K insists on it.
