Beef & Chinese broccoli stir-fry (芥蓝牛肉)

How to make the beef succulent

Nothing is worse than chewing a piece of tough, dry beef. So it’s super important to make your beef tender, succulent when cooking this stir-fry dish. Here are the four golden rules that I suggest you follow:

• Choose the cuts that are suitable for stir-frying. Flank steak and skirt steak are good choices. You could use other cuts when you follow a tenderising procedure (explained in the later text).
• Thinly slice the beef across the grain. To making cutting easier, I always freeze the beef piece to semi-frozen (it takes 1-2 hours depending on the size of the meat). This way, you can slice the beef in a more uniformed way. Always check how the grain lays out and make sure you slice across the grain (instead of parallel with the grain). This dramatically reduces the chewiness of the cooked beef.
• Marinate properly to lock in the moisture. Ginger, soy sauce, Shaoxing rice wine are used to season the beef. Cornstarch and water are to tenderise it. At the end, coat the beef with a little cooking oil to lock in the moisture. It also helps to separate the slices so that they don’t stick to each other too much.
• Pay attention to the timing and do not overcook. This is a very important point. 

How to tenderise tougher cuts of beef

It’s not ideal to use tough cuts of beef (those for braising) for Chinese stir-fries, but you could use a special tenderising technique to make it acceptable (provided you also follow all the rules mentioned above). Here is how you do it:

• For 200g (7oz) sliced beef, add ¼ teaspoon of baking soda then mix well. Leave to rest for at least 30 mins.
• Rinse the beef in 250ml (1 cup) of water with 2 teaspoons of vinegar. Then rinse again under running water.
• Marinate in the usual way (as instructed in this recipe)

The optimal stir-fry techniques

Stir-frying is one of the quickest cooking methods. Since all the ingredients are cut into bite-size pieces and the cooking temperature stays fairly high, it usually takes only a few minutes from start to finish.

However, it can be a tricky job if you aren’t familiar with this particular way of cooking, or not accustomed to using a Chinese wok. I’d like to take this beef and Chinese broccoli dish as an example to share a few useful tips.

Prepare well before you start

Always have everything ready before you turn on the heat to stir-fry. This means: having all the ingredients chopped; having the condiments to hand or the sauce mixed; having the serving plate nearby.

Stir fry in stages

If two or more main ingredients require different cooking time, you need to stir fry them in stages. For this dish, you need to stir-fry the Chinese broccoli and beef separately. This ensures the vegetable stays crispy and the meat remains tender. 

Also, I usually separate the stem part and the leafy part of the Chinese broccoli. Fry the stems first then add in the leaves. This way you don’t overcook the leave thus you won’t get too much liquid in the dish.  

Heat the wok to avoid sticking

If you’re using a traditional wok without non-stick coating, you might encounter sticking problem from time to time, especially when frying meat. The solution is easy: Make sure your wok is smoking hot when adding in the ingredients. In Chinese, we describe this method as “Re Guo Liang You/热锅凉油”, meaning “hot wok cool oil” (Learn more about how to use a carbon steel wok properly).

For this stir-fry dish, I start frying Chinese broccoli first, then dish it out. At this point, you can guarantee that the wok is very hot. Add more oil and put in the beef. You can see in my tutorial video (inside the recipe card below) that it doesn’t stick to my carbon steel wok at all.

Make a delicious sauce

The final step is to add a scrumptious sauce to the stir-fry. It should be salty, fragrant and thick enough to coat the beef and Chinese broccoli (but not so thick that it tastes gloopy). Here is my formula for 2 servings:

• 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
• ½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sesame oil
• 2 teaspoon cornstarch
• 2 tablespoon water/stock

I usually serve this stir-fry along with other savoury dishes. If you wish to have it alone on top of steamed rice for a simple meal, I suggest you increase the volume of the sauce by 1.5 times. This way you would have extra to mix with the rice. It’s very tasty to enjoy it that way!

How to twist this recipe

Although beef and Chinese broccoli is a classic combination, please feel free to improvise, especially when you have trouble sourcing Chinese broccoli or prefer other meat instead of beef.

Vegetable substitutes

There are quite a few vegetables which also work well for this recipe, such as tender-stem broccoli (aka broccolini/baby broccoli), celery, celtuce (aka stem lettuce), etc. Or, try my recipe for Pepper Beef Stir-Fry.

Follow the same instructions to cook. If you wish to use regular broccoli, I suggest you blanch its florets beforehand as it has a denser texture thus takes more time to cook through.

Meat substitutes

You may replace the beef with other meat to stir-fry with Chinese broccoli. If you choose to use chicken or pork, follow the same marinade formula and cooking instructions.

Shrimp are a great substitute too. As they are tender by nature, you can reduce the cornstarch by half and omit water in the marinade. Also, it takes a very short time to cook shrimp. As soon as they curl up and turn pink, you know they are cooked.