Beef and Broccoli

If it’s your first time ordering a Chinese takeaway, you can’t go wrong with Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry~

Although it’s nearly impossible to make a Chinese restaurant style Peking duck at home, you can make beef and broccoli at home that tastes totally like a restaurant takeout!

This recipe teaches you how to make Chinese-restaurant-must-order, nutritious, and delicious beef and broccoli within 30 minutes.

Choice of Beef for stir frying

I like to use New York strips or ribeye to make my beef and broccoli stir fry. Both of them have plenty of beef flavor and a buttery tender texture.

When you New York strips for stir frying, remember to cut off the thick band of fat on one side of the steak. This part could be too hard to chew when stir fried, but it turns soft and tastes like heaven after slow cooked for 2 hours.

What other parts of the beef can I use for stir frying?

Since stir-frying only burns the beef for a very short period of time, we’d better choose the most tender beef cuts for this dish.

Beef cuts marked in red in the picture above, such as meat from the ribs, T-bone, sirloin, ribeye, top loin (strip), and tenderloin, are the best parts to be cut into strips for stir fry.

Beef cuts marked in black in this picture above are chewier. Therefore they usually require a longer cooking time. If you really want to use these parts for stir fry, you will need to cut them into very thin strips, and use my following method to make them taste more tender.

How to Make Beef Stir-Fry More Tender?

You may have seen some recipes or Chinese restaurants using beef flank or even beef shank for stir frying.

Have you ever wondered how they made these tough and hard-to-chew parts tender?

Here are some simple tips to make your beef stir-fry more tender:

1. Cut beef against the grain

To make a tough beef (such as beef flank) easier to chew, we will need to cut through the muscle fiber running down the meat. Because if you don’t cut through these fibers with a knife, you will have to break them later with your teeth, and get a very sore jaw.

Specifically, we observe the beef carefully before cutting, find these parallel lines of muscle fiber, and slice perpendicular to these lines.

By the way, my dad taught me this cooking tip when I was a kid: ”横切牛羊竖切猪，斜切鸡顺切鱼“。

It can be translated as: “Cross-cut beef and sheep, vertical cut pork, diagonally cut chicken and fish.”

Beef and sheep are tough and chewy. Therefore we need to cut against the grain to break up their fibers.

Chicken and fish are tender and soft. No matter we cut alone or against the fiber lines, they could fall apart easily after stir fried. Therefore, we’d better cut diagonally to keep chicken or fish strips from falling apart.

2. Tenderize the beef with baking soda

According to Cook’s Illustration, marinating beef with baking soda can raise the pH on the beef’s surface, “making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively”, which keeps the beef strips tender when it’s stir fried. 

For every pound of beef, you can tenderize it with ¼ teaspoon to 1 teaspoon of baking soda, depending on the specific parts of the beef and the marinating time (10 minutes to 30 minutes).

For example, I used a New York strip, which is a very tender part of the beef, so I only added ¼ teaspoon of baking soda. You may want to use up to 1 teaspoon of baking soda if you are using beef flank to make beef and broccoli stir fry.

You can also extend the marinating time to use less the baking soda.

3. Tenderize the beef white egg white and cornstarch

By coating the beef strips with a egg white and cornstarch slurry, we are creating a “protective layer” on the surface of the meat to lock in the juices, in this way the beef strips will stay moist and soft after stir-fried.

4. Coat the beef with a thin layer of oil

The last step of marinating is to coat the beef strips with a thin layer of oil. I used olive oil, you can also use vegetable oil or peanut oil.

This thin oil layer can also prevent the beef from turning dry and hard after stir fried.

What’s more, the oil layer can prevent the beef strips from sticking together in the frying pan. So that every piece of the beef can be cooked evenly.

Beef and Broccoli Sauce

Every restaurant and family has a different preference of the beef and broccoli sauce. I have been making this dish for years, and this is my favorite combination of the seasonings:

1. Warm water

I use ¾ cup of warm water to dissolve all the seasonings for making the beef and broccoli sauce.

Make sure it’s warm instead of hot, otherwise the cornstarch will get lumpy.

You can simply microwave the water for 40 seconds to make it warm. Your hot water from the tap can contain contaminants, therefore you’d better use cold tap water and heat it up.

2. Oyster sauce

Oyster sauce is often used in vegetable stir-fry. It can give your bland vegetable dishes a sweet and savory rich taste.

People said that you could probably substitute oyster sauce with Hoisin Sauce, which I’ve never tried before, because I always have oyster sauce in my fridge.

Check out my homemade oyster sauce recipe.

3. Dark and Light soy sauce

Light soy sauce tastes more liquid, thinner, and saltier, while dark soy sauce is thicker, very stickier, and has a hint of sweetness.

The dark soy sauce can stain the food with the red-wine-color (with more soy flavor too) way better than the light soy sauce.

You need a combination of the two in order to make this dish in perfect color and flavor!

4. Cornstarch

Add cornstarch to make the sauce thick, so that it can coat evenly on every piece of the broccolis and beef strips.

5. Chicken powder or MSG

Want authentic Chinese Restaurant flavor? The unsecret secret ingredient is MSG.

Although FDA has classified MSG as a food ingredient that’s generally recognized as safe. MSG is still considered as unhealthy in our traditional view. Therefore I don’t have any MSG in my kitchen.

I’d occasionally use chicken powder, which I believe still contains MSG but in a smaller amount, to create a restaurant-style flavor for my dishes.

You can also substitute the water in this recipe with same amount of chicken stock to skip the MSG.

How to Make Beef and Broccoli at Home

EQUIPMENT

• 1 frying pan
• 1 Knife

INGREDIENTS List

• 500 g beef (about 1 lb, see “choice of beef” in content above)

– Beef Marinade

• ¼ tsp salt (about 2g)
• ½ tsp dark soy sauce (can be substituted with light/regular soy sauce)
• ½ tsp black pepper
• ¼ tsp baking soda
• 1 egg white
• 2 tbsp cornstarch
• 2 tbsp olive oil (or vegetable oil)

– Beef and Broccoli Sauce

• ¾ cup warm water 
• ¼ tsp salt
• 1 tbsp oyster sauce
• ½ tbsp sugar
• 2 tbsp light/regular soy sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• ½ tsp black pepper
• ¼ tsp chicken powder (can be substituted with msg or you can skip it)
• 1½ tbsp cornstarch

– Other Ingredients

• 2 tbsp cooking oil (I used vegetable oil)
• 3 garlic cloves
• 1 tsp minced ginger
• 500 g broccoli (about 1 lb)
• ½ tbsp roasted sesame seeds (optional)

INSTRUCTIONS 

1. Add 2 tbsps of flour to broccolis, fill the basin with cold water and soak the broccoli for 10 minutes. 

2. Cut 500g beef against the grain (see picture illustrations above) into ⅛ inch thick x 1 inch wide x 4 inch long slices.

3. Transfer sliced beef to a bowl, add ¼ tsp salt, ½ tsp dark soy sauce, ½ tsp black pepper, and ¼ baking soda to the beef. Mix by hand until the color (from dark soy sauce) looks evenly on the beef.

4. Add 1 egg white to the beef. Mix well by hands for about 2 minutes until all the egg white has been absorbed into the beef.

5. Add 2 tbsps of cornstarch to the beef. Mix gently by hands until all the beef slices are evenly coated with a thin layer of cornstarch.

6. Add 2 tbsps of olive oil to the beef. Mix gently by hands until all the beef slices are evenly coated with a thin layer of olive oil. (This step can prevent the beef slices from sticking to each other in the frying pan.) Set aside to marinate for 10 minutes.

7. Rinse the broccoli under running water. Cut broccoli florets into bite-size. Peel broccoli stems, cut them into bite-size.

8. Optionally (See Note 1), bring half pot of water to a boil over high heat, add in the broccoli, and boil the broccoli for about 1 minute. Use a slotted spoon to transfer the blanched broccoli to a plate. Set aside.

9. Add all the sauce ingredients (¾ cup warm water, ¼ tsp salt, 1 tbsp oyster sauce, ½ tbsp sugar, 2 tbsp light soy sauce, 1 tsp dark soy sauce, ½ tsp black pepper, ¼ tsp chicken powder (or msg), 1½ tbsp cornstarch) to a small bowl. Mix well until all the ingredients are dissolved. Set aside.

10. Finely chop 3 garlic cloves and a small piece of ginger.

11. Add 2 tbsps of cooking oil to a large frying pan, heat up the oil over medium high heat. (See Note 2) Add chopped ginger and garlic to stir fry for 20 seconds. Add marinated beef slices to stir fry until there is no pink spots on the beef slices, transfer the fried beef to a bowl.

12. Do not wash or wipe the pan, pour in the sauce we just made. Stir and simmer the sauce for about 1 minute until it gets thickened with a glossy sheen.

13. Add broccoli to the frying pan, stir until all the broccolis are evenly coated with sauce. Add fried beef slices to the frying pan, stir fry for about 30 seconds until all the ingredients are well mixed.

14. Transfer beef and broccoli to a serving plate. Optionally sprinkle some toasted sesame seeds over the top. Serve immediately with hot steamed rice or fried noodles.

NOTES

Note 1: I skip the broccoli blanching step 50% of the time, especially when I have no patience or time to cook. Raw broccoli is safe to eat anyway~ You can add the raw broccolis directly to the frying pan to fry with beef later. But blanched broccoli will definitely taste softer and more flavorful.

Note 2: How to know if the oil is hot enough for stir frying: Place your palm 1 foot above the frying pan (NEVER touch the hot frying pan), once you are able to feel the hot air above the frying pan, the oil is hot enough for stir frying.

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