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Beef and Broccoli
Serves 4 Prep 15 min Cook 10 min Total 25 min Type Meal Origin Chinese

Beef and Broccoli

Cantonese-American takeaway classic: thinly sliced beef stir-fried with broccoli in a glossy soy-oyster sauce. Fifteen minutes start to finish; the kind of weeknight dinner that beats a ten-quid takeaway and tastes more like home.

Serves 4 Prep 15 minutes Cook 10 minutes Units Rate

Overview

Sliced beef velvets briefly in cornflour and soy, broccoli florets blanch to bright green, and the lot stir-fries hard with garlic and ginger in a soy-oyster-rice-wine sauce. Served over steamed rice.

Ingredients

Beef

  • 500 g rib-eye, sirloin (or rump, sliced thin against the grain)
  • 1 tablespoon soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine (or dry sherry)
  • 1 tablespoon cornflour
  • 1 teaspoon sugar

Sauce

  • 4 tablespoons oyster sauce
  • 2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon Shaoxing rice wine
  • 1 teaspoon sugar
  • 1 teaspoon toasted sesame oil
  • 100 ml chicken stock (or water)
  • 1 teaspoon cornflour

Stir-fry

  • 1 head broccoli (cut into florets, stems peeled and sliced)
  • 3 tablespoons vegetable oil
  • 4 garlic cloves (crushed)
  • 1 thumb fresh ginger (grated)
  • 4 spring onions (cut into 4 cm pieces)
  • Cooked rice, to serve

Method

Stage 1 - Marinate the beef

  1. Toss the sliced beef with the soy, rice wine, cornflour and sugar.
  2. Let sit while you prep the rest.

Stage 2 - Sauce

  1. Whisk all sauce ingredients in a small bowl.

Stage 3 - Blanch broccoli

  1. Bring a pot of water to the boil; salt lightly.
  2. Blanch the broccoli for 90 seconds; drain and refresh under cold water (locks in colour).

Stage 4 - Stir-fry

  1. Heat 2 tablespoons of oil in a wok over high heat until smoking.
  2. Add the beef in a single layer; sear 1 minute, then stir-fry 1 minute more. Remove.
  3. Add the remaining oil; stir-fry the garlic, ginger and white parts of the spring onion for 30 seconds.
  4. Add the broccoli; toss for 1 minute.
  5. Return the beef; pour in the sauce.
  6. Toss vigorously for 1-2 minutes until the sauce thickens and coats everything.
  7. Stir in the spring onion greens.

Stage 5 - Serve

  1. Plate over rice.

Notes

  • Slice beef thin and against the grain: The single biggest factor in tenderness for stir-fries.
  • Smoking-hot wok: Wok hei (the breath of the wok) is the smoky char on the ingredients. Mid-temperature gives a wet stew.
  • Blanch the broccoli: Stir-fry alone keeps it raw in the centre; pre-blanching gives the bright bite.

Storage

  • Best fresh. Keeps 1 day refrigerated; reheat in a hot pan with a splash of water.

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Shuizhu Niurou

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Two sensations at once: the bright, immediate burn of dried chilli (la) sitting under the slow numbing-electric prickle of Sichuan peppercorn (ma). That mala pair is the whole point. Beneath that, the broth is salty and fermented-funky from doubanjiang, the deep umami of broad-bean paste that's been aged for months in clay vessels. The hot oil pour at the table is theatre but it does real work: it blooms the dried chillies and Sichuan peppercorn powder right before you smell them, so the aroma arrives in a wave. Texturally: gloriously tender silk-thin beef slices (the cornflour-and-egg-white marinade is what keeps them that way), crisp-on-the-edge bok choy or bean sprouts wilting under the heat, oil swimming on top. Easier than its restaurant-banquet reputation suggests once you have doubanjiang and Sichuan peppercorns in the pantry; the technique is mostly "don't overcook the beef" and "pour the oil while it's smoking". Originates in 1930s Chongqing as a riverboat-worker's dish, water and chillies were cheap, lean cuts of beef tough, then spread through Sichuan in the 1980s as the wider mala movement caught hold.

Chinese 1 hour 5 minutes Serves4