Beef with Broccoli | Kenji's Cooking Show

Hi everyone, I'm Kenji, I'm home and today we're going to make some

beef

and

broccoli

, so here's an American Chinese classic, um, and one of my favorites when I was a kid, so the first thing we get is a little meat, this turns out to be a steak, um, also known. like sirloin flap or if you're in Boston it's called steak tips, this is butterfly shaped which is how they do it here in California, if you can't get flat meat I would also recommend something like skirt steak. or hanger steak or flank steak, anything that has kind of a coarse grain like this is good because it will absorb the marinade and also be more tender, so what I'm doing first so you can tell that the meat has a grain.

On the right, the grain runs like this, so the first thing we want to do is cut with the grain into pieces that are about an inch and a half to two inches wide. Well, first with the grain and then afterwards. We're going to take each of these and we're going to cut them against the grain with our knife at an angle and cutting a grip against the grain, that's kind of like what you're doing is shortening those muscle fibers so that your pieces end up. until it's more tender, this will all go into a bowl, this is a very easy, easy dish and luckily it's one that as long as you follow some tips that I'm going to give you, you'll be able to make it indoors um no. you don't need a fancy place to walk around, you don't need anything really powerful, you can do it just on a regular old burner inside, in fact you can even do it on an electric stove with a flat pan if you really want to, although, on the contrary From what my previous employer claims or at least used to claim, I think they may have changed their mind on this more recently, you don't get the same flavors that you get in a stir.

When frying in a wok you don't get the same flavors in a pan, this just has to do with the way the oil vaporizes as it goes through the heat and the way things are thrown in, they just don't taste the same when you do it. When you're in a pan, Western pans are designed more for browning, whereas in stir-fries you don't really brown as much as you don't, you're generally not looking to form a crust or brown the outside of a piece of meat, um. We're really looking to cook it very quickly and remove the moisture very quickly and most of the color in a stir-fry rather than coming from the Maillard reaction, you know, or from caramelization, those two browning reactions that occur with high heat, They come from the sauces, so we have our meat here.

I have a separate cutting board that I put on top of the first one when whenever I work with meat that way, it's easier to clean, I don't have to worry about contaminating all my other stuff. Okay, so clean up my knife so I can start working on my

broccoli

. Meanwhile, I'm going to marinate this meat. You want to marinate the meat for at least 15 minutes, you don't need to spend much longer. so I have a little bit of light soy sauce, probably about a teaspoon. This is about three-quarters of a pound of

beef

. I'm watching everything, but I'll put a link to a recipe, some sesame. oil, a little bit of wine for shashing, about two teaspoons, wow, that's too much, I don't want that much, it will vaporize too much if we put that much into this, it's a little message, a little bit of cornstarch, about a teaspoon of cornstarch, and this is the real secret ingredient baking soda about a quarter teaspoon per half pound of meat, so that's about a quarter plus an eighth of a teaspoon that I just put in there.

What baking soda does is tenderize meat, so you don't know. I'm not exactly sure the mechanism that the cooks illustrated, my former employer, the cooks illustrated, put up, wrote an article saying that it has to do with raising the ph will prevent some kind of protein cross-linking so that you don't squeeze it in as much when you cook it and This way it will stay more tender and retain more moisture. I'm not really reading it, it sounded a little wavy, so I'm not quite sure if that's the reason, but it's enough to say add baking soda to beef, or chicken, or any type of protein, that It's the key to making it really nice and soft and tender, it's what they do in Chinese restaurants, that's how they get the meat nice and tender. and you also want to massage it pretty hard so you can see how I'm really working that marinade into um, you know, just like massaging a knot in your muscles or tying a knot in your muscles.

Massaging will help loosen and tenderize it, massaging the meat will also loosen and soften it so it won't be more tender when you cook it through, so next I'll set it aside and let it marinate for about 15 minutes, so at some point moment of this video I'll probably do a jump cut because I don't have enough things to do to fill the next 15 minutes, but what we're going to do next is get our broccoli, so this is actually it. broccoli, which is what I prefer for this, or you can use Chinese broccoli, so what I'm going to do is the stems, I'm going to cut them at an angle like that until the florets separate and that's it.

The stems are a little tougher, so you should cut them into thinner strips, while you can leave the florets whole. You can make this with regular broccoli or do it exactly the same way, cutting the stems on the bias into thin pieces. the whole florets um and with real broccoli, you know, very large, European style broccoli or American style broccoli, you might even want to consider peeling the bottom of the stems, the stems of broccoli are actually. I remember seeing this on jacques when I was a little kid and on the other hand, more recently, I think in one of his pbs reruns, he talks about how the stems of broccoli are the most broccoli or the parts with the most broccoli of the broccoli, if you know what I mean, okay, so I have some water goes here we're going to steam this broccoli, kind of a steam cut oil combination just for about a minute, okay, we don't want to , we don't want it to get soft, we just want to leave it. minute, let it sit for about a minute so it's nice and tender, crispy, high heat, just a little bit of water and in the meantime, I'm going to come over here and make my sauce, so for my sauce, dark soy sauce , about a tablespoon light soy sauce about a tablespoon, so light soy sauce actually has a stronger flavor than dark soy sauce dark soy sauce is normally added its main contribution is oyster sauce color, this will be the main thing here, it's about two tablespoons of wine with oyster sauce.

We're going to add separately and then we're also going to do some cornstarch slurry on the side, so we probably won't use all of this, but I'll get a couple tablespoons of cornstarch and about a tablespoon of cold water if you took hot water, this Cornstarch will not form little bubbles that have dry starch inside and you will not be able to dissolve them all with cold water, so the broccoli is ready, drain it and put it in the bowl. We're going to use the same bowl to serve later, now our wok is ready to stir fry, our broccoli is ready, oh the last sauce ingredient, about a tablespoon of sugar, so again here's a couple of teaspoons or a tablespoon. roughly dark soy, light soy, a tablespoon of dark soy, light soy, about two tablespoons of oyster sauce, about a tablespoon of sugar, and that's all our sauce here, so sweet, salty, salty, that's it the classic kind of use of broccoli dip flavor.

Okay, now our last two ingredients are aromatic, there's garlic and ginger. This is actually just pre-peeled garlic which is not the best garlic to use and I know some people are vehemently opposed to pre-peeled garlic but sometimes I only get it because I'm feeling lazy so smash smash smash smash isn't necessary make it super fine or precise with the garlic in this dish, okay, pretty good and ginger. I'm going to save these pieces for later and I'm going to take a piece like this, peel off the skin, you can also do that if it's easier for you or if you know you don't want to play with the knife this way, you can peel the ginger with a spoon , just scrape it off with a spoon. and the skin will come off immediately.

I don't want to bother messing up a spoon right now, so it's not going well for me, so for the ginger I'm going to cut it against the grain into these kind of coins, okay? Then, similar to garlic, I'll hit it like this, you'll see it break down along with its grains and then it just needs a little bit of chopping and it'll be ready. I'm going to let the meat marinate now for about 15 minutes. um and so and now through the magic of turning my camera off and on again 15 minutes later we're ready to cook so walk on high heat um this is a 14 inch thick flat bottom walker so about 2 millimeters thick is what you need.

I want in a wok um one and a half to two millimeters uh and this is carbon steel uh well seasoned, that means you know it's essentially nonstick when you season the carbon steel well enough um and the key to

cooking

inside in a wok is that you never want to fill the pan, so I'm making a small enough batch that I can probably do all of this in one go, but if I were making more meat than I would say, making like a full pound of meat, I would brown the meat in two separate batches and transfer it to a bowl in the middle and then at the end add it all back in because on the inside, an inside burner that you know your home stove probably has an outlet on. of maybe 15,000 btus max, whereas, you know, or maybe if you have a real high-end stove, 25 or 30,000, whereas a stand burner in a restaurant, when they make big batches, it's more like 160 to 200,000 btus, but really what you want is like a minimum of about a hundred thousand btus, uh, to properly fry a large amount, like a whole amount of meat, um, so in this case, instead of that, we're going to preheat really well, we want that oil to be nice and very hot, the wok needs to be hot all over and we need everything ready to go, so I've got my marinated meat, I've got my aromatics, I've got my sauce, my mix of cornstarch and my broccoli, oh, and finally my serving dish, oh no.

I'm going to put it back in this bowl of broccoli, that's it, okay, done, here we go, so once we get started, it's going to go fast. Well, I'll put my meat in first, spread it out, use as much surface area as you can now. a real heat, you know, a really powerful hike, you could be stirring this all the time, um in a field like this, although it's better to let it sit for a little bit so it really has a chance to start burning. You don't really want a lot of color developing, you don't need it to turn brown or anything, but you do want it to start moving without smoking, so we'll give it about 20 to 30 seconds on that side.

Stir and stir, that's fine and once it's almost completely cooked, once there's not much pink or red left on the outside, I'll go in with my aromatics, my garlic and my ginger still on the highest possible heat. On an indoor setting like this, I'm going to use high heat all the time, whereas with an outdoor setting or a large or more powerful setting, I would lower the heat a little bit to make sure nothing burns properly, so now it's starting. to smell very good, the aromatics are softened, the meat is essentially cooked. I'm going to stir my sauce and go in and go around the sides, that helps give it a little bit more of that charred flavor, and then my broccoli goes with just a touch of a cornstarch mixture, let's see how that works.

I think it's fine. I don't think we need any more cornstarch than that and it's well done. Chinese-American beef and broccoli with oyster sauce. I love it. that bittersweet, sorry, sweet and salty, very aromatic, yes you may have a little problem, let me calm down for you, good girl, now it wasn't so quick and easy, okay guys, girls, non-binary panels, use a mask, stay safe, be healthy and me. See you next time, real quick before I go. I wanted to quickly

show

you how I keep my walk seasoned, so all I did was rub this with this little scrub guy and a little bit of water like that, I scrubbed it good under running water. water and now what I'm going to do put it directly on top to get all the excess water out put it directly on a burner this is what I do when I walk every time I cook on it the same with my carbon steel the same with my cast iron like this it's like I did keep my stuff in good shape keep the seasoning in there keep it nice and non stick now what we're going to do is let this heat up until the water evaporates okay then I'm going to take some oh me.

I was going to say I was going to grab a little paper towel, I don't know where that went, but let me grab a little napkin here, I think I have them out, okay, I'm going to grab a little napkin, put some oil in there, no. . too much and then just rub it in and that's it, you basically want to put the oil in there and then pretend like you did it accidentally and you're trying to get it all out again,Well, that's all you have to do from time to time. for a while I'll do the outside too, but I don't do that every time, uh, every time, I cook there, now, really, guys, guys, girls, non-binary friends, I'll see you later.