Self-saucing Beef

Just a quick recipe today. Or really, it's more of a 'treatment' of steak that can be applied to other meats, like chicken.

This method involves a quick marinating of beef strips in some soy sauce, oil and cornflour, then cooking it in a hot pan so that the juice from the meat melds with the marinade to produce its own sauce. This a popular way of preparing beef in Cantonese restaurants, and I've recently had a delicious version where they added wasabi paste at the end of the cooking to give the dish a Japanese twist. 

Some restaurants also add some bicarbonate of soda to the marinating meat, to make it more tender, but I didn't do this because the steak that I used was such good quality (I could tell this by how easily it sliced when raw, and Tabitha cat kept scratching at my leg for bits of it - ouch!).

Saucy Beef

serves 2

Ingredients

1 piece of rump steak, approx 400g, sliced or cubed

2 tblsp soy sauce

1 tblsp rice bran oil (or other neutral-tasting oil, not olive oil)

1 tblsp cornflour

1 tsp grated garlic

1 tsp grated ginger

1 tblsp oil, for frying

a few stems green onions or garlic chives, chopped

Method

1. Marinate the meat: Put the steak in a bowl and add the soy sauce, oil and cornflour. Mix so that the meat is well-coated, then cover and leave for 15 minutes.

2. Heat the oil in a frypan over high heat, then add the garlic and ginger and stir for 30 seconds.

3. Add the meat to the pan, separating the pieces while it cooks. Stir for a minute, then add the green onions. Quickly toss together until the meat is no longer red, but do not overcook.

4. Serve hot with steamed rice or plain noodles

These greens aren't garlic chives, but I can't think of their name. What are they called??? They come in long lengths, like snake beans, and they have a garlicky oniony taste.

The sliced steak is marinated in the soon-to-be-sauce.

For an accompaniment, I steamed some bought plain buns ('mantou') that had a slightly sweet flavour that goes really well with the beef and can mop up the sauce

Once cooked, the cornflour and soy create a velvety sauce that coats the beef

Mmm... saucy!

Open wide, here comes the chopstick aeroplane...