Thursday, July 31, 2008

Stir fried beef with spring onions and ginger


This is one of my favourite dish to order when we're out at the Chinese Restaurant. Its simply satisfying with a bowl of white rice. Though its a simple dish to make, it has its challenges. For this dish to turn out great, it has to have lots of 'wok hei' (breath of the wok?) aka having a damn huge flame and you'd have to have lightning quick hands to add in all the ingredients to prevent the thin slices of beef from overcooking. OK most of us at home will not have those huge flames, what you could do is cook this in very small batches and have your wok flaming hot before starting. To overcome the shortcoming in the lighting quick hands department, mix all your sauces together first before starting.

Ingredients:
-Beef schnitzel or any other nice cuts suitable for stir frying
-1.5 inch of ginger, finely sliced
-As much spring onions as you like cut into long strips
-Corn starch mixture for thickening (mixture of corn starch/flour with water)
Sauces:-
-4 tbsp of soy sauce
-1 tbsp of sesame sauce
-dashes of pepper
-1 tbsp of chicken granules
-1 tsp of sugar
-3 tbsp of shiaoxing Chinese cooking wine (do not mix this with the rest of the sauces)

Note: You could add in oyster sauce if you like and decrease the rest of the sauces proportion to balance out the saltiness. I do not use oyster sauce in my household out of choice and have substituted that mostly with chicken granules which has worked perfectly.

Heat up your wok (preferably, cause it can take very high temperature without damage unlike a non-stick one) still its sizzling hot and add in your cooking oil. Then add in the ginger slices and brown it on both sides and add in the beef and give it a few good toss continuously before adding in the sauces and the spring onion. It should come to a simmer in no time, at this point all the beef slices should have changed colour and that denotes that its cooked. Stir in some corn starch mixture till you get the sauce to the consistency you like. Serve immediately.
p/s: If you're not serving this dish immediately, might be a good idea to slightly under cook the beef as it'd continue to cook even after you've dished it up due to the heat.



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