Today, we wanted to teach you how to make
beef and broccoli, a Cantonese homecooking classic, but as the length of this video might
suggest, we did want to do something a little different here. Because, at least in the west it feels like
beef and broccoli seems to be a lot of people’s introduction to stirfrying, so what we wanted
to do here is really drill down and explain all the hows and whys of everything that’s
going on. Reason being, in a lot of the online discourse
regarding stir-frying – ever since we started this channel more or less exactly six years
ago – seem to try to explain things roughly according to… this model. It’s a model based around a sort of exoticized
ideal of restaurant wok frying, and contains a lot of misconceptions about what’s actually
going on. So, what we’ll do here is first go over
what’d be the general restaurant approach to making a beef and broccoli and why, then
taking that base and showing you how you could mimic those flavors at home… even working out of nothing but a non-stick
skillet. So then, first let’s get started with our
broccoli. Now before anything, I want you to think about
how – even in the absence of a beef stir fry - you would personally cook broccoli. I mean, it’s a heartier vegetable, so generally
speaking, you’d probably steam it, roast it, or blanch it. If you tried to simply sauté broccoli straight
up, it’d probably end up getting overly charred by the time it all evenly cooks through. Roasting, meanwhile, isn’t really a common
vegetable technique in Chinese cooking, so what you’re left with is blanching or steaming. And generally speaking, a Cantonese restaurant
is going to blanch your broccoli first and keep it on the side… so here that’s just
one head’s worth, blanched for 90 seconds, and rinsed with cool water to stop the cooking
process. Then, in the same way, for the beef I want
you to think about how – even in the absence of a broccoli stir fry – you would personally
cook thinly sliced lean meat. Now this’s definitely a time when sauteeing
would begin to make a lot more sense, though deep frying could also work, and in some cases
so could blanching. Of course, the awkward thing about making
any sort of intro-to-stir-fry video is that different meats are going to have different
considerations. On net, the easiest meat to work with when
stir-frying is lean pork, which’s why that’s usually our recommended protein for those
first getting started out with their wok. But, we’re making a… beef and broccoli
today - one of the more challenging meats but this also does give us a chance to potentially
demystify some of the more… involved restaurant approaches. Now, I know that looking at this, you might
not immediately think of beef as ‘dry’ or ‘chewy’, but that’s because in a
western context people either braise beef, slow roast it, or just eat it not completely
cooked. There’s a couple tricks that restaurants’ll
use to counteract that fact though, and they start with those tricks with the marinade. Now, marinades in Chinese cuisine – sometimes
called ‘velveting’ in English – are to (1) flavor the meat and (2) improve the
final texture, something especially important for beef. So what we’re going to be doing is adding… all of this… so let’s go over the why
for each one. For flavor, you’ll first obviously need
some salt, practically above everything else. Be sure not to neglect this – a common mistake
we see people make is forgetting their salt and then compensating with way too much soy
sauce. Shaoxing wine, meanwhile, balances that sort
of ‘raw-meat’ odor, and then sugar balances the salt. Oyster sauce, meanwhile, is kind of a beef-specific
addition – I mean, surf and turf’s awesome for a reason… together black pepper for
a similar purpose. The soy sauce, then, is for umami and general
flavoring, and cutting that soy sauce with splash of dark soy helps deepen the color
and make things look more appetizing. Then the baking soda, meanwhile, is just for
texture – alkalines helps tenderize the tougher beef, but often you’ll also see
restaurants use an enzyme called papain in the same way. The cornstarch helps give the beef a smooth
coating while also preventing overcooking, and sometimes a bit of egg white’s also
added to the mix for the same reason. The water is another very beef-specific addition,
which helps prevent the dryer beef from drying out when cooking. Then, we’ll just mix those in super well,
then coat that all with a good slug of oil, which helps ensure that the marinade doesn’t
leech out. Of course, probably the critical thing that
a restaurant would do to prepare this dish is to cook the beef via a technique called
passing through oil, which’s basically just deep-frying by any other name. It’s just a wok-full of oil, 165 centigrade,
tossed in. This velveting-deep frying combination is
what gives restaurant beef its characteristic texture, but worry not, for our recipe later
I’m definitely aware that most of you aren’t willing to walk this mile.. solution forthcoming. Now, either way, at this point now we’ve
got ourselves some cooked beef and some cooked broccoli. And if you wanted, theoretically at this point
you could just eat these as is, they’d be perfectly edible and reasonably delectable. So then my question I want you to think about
then is why even stir fry? A lot of the internet would probably turn
back to that old model and respond accordingly. And while further cooking definitely does
something, at a fundamental level we believe this’s more about layering on a few more
flavors: here being? Oil infused with aromatics, some sizzling
wine and soy sauce, and then finally a final seasoning… all of which which are mixed
in and coat the ingredients. So. Now to start, step one to a restaurant stir-fry
is something called longyau or huaguo, which’s getting your wok really hot, then swirling
in a bunch of oil, and dumping it out to give your carbon steel wok a non-stick surface. It’s only a move to make carbon steel a
bit more slippery, usually in our videos we do a simplified version of it which is to,
[] and if you’ve got a non-stick this step is completely unnecessary. Then, we’ll add in the oil and immediately
go in with some aromatics – immediately because adding minced stuff to already-hot
oil would be a great way to get super burnt minced stuff. And again, all we need to do here is infuse
the oil with the flavor of the aromatics, then we’ll swirl in a tablespoon of Shaoxing
wine, let it sizzle against the hot wok, again, basically for flavor. Then we’ll toss in the beef and then give
it all a quick stir together. Now. Quick aside that.. in Chinese culinary schools,
they’ll teach a lot of these cool fancy stir frying movements, and really, they are
pretty impressive looking. Online, I see a lot of people kind of trying
to mimic those movements with tongs, which does look cool but we think on most stoves
would actually be counter-productive. The reason those restaurant movements exist
is that because on a powerful wok burners if you don’t continuously move stuff around,
it’ll burn in a matter of seconds. Home stoves are not that hot and you don’t
want that much movement. Instead, the homecook’s stir-frying motion
is this (1) scoop (2) flip (3) send to the hot center. Again – scoop, flip, send to the center. Definitively don’t obsess here though, often
I am a little lazy and find myself just moving stuff about, Steph can rag on me but it’s
fine 99% of the time. Then, we’ll swirl in a bit of soy sauce
in the same way, and after a brief mix we’ll add in the broccoli. Add this point, we have a choice – do we
want a stir fry that’s saucy, or not saucy. If you want saucy, add in the left; not saucy,
add in the right. And then… once that’s thickened, drizzle
in a touch of oil for sheen… and then that’s basically a restaurant-style beef and broccoli. So. Now let’s adjust this to a home kitchen,
using what we just learned. I’m guessing – and correct me if I’m
wrong – the biggest hurdle for a lot of you would be that whole passing through oil
bit. A lot of kitchens just aren’t set up for
it – it’s a cool technique but that’s ok. You’ve got three choices. First route, and the simplest, would be to
just stop caring so much about mimicking restaurants. If you want to know what a homestyle beef
with Chinese broccoli looks like in Guangdong, it’s… this. You’re not getting that restaurant look
and texture but like, I dunno, who cares. Because all you need to do to follow this
route, just… pre stir fry the beef. Same marinade, this time in a non-stick, couple
tablespoons of oil, don’t overthink it. Just cook the beef on high until it’s done. You won’t be able to tell all your friends
that it’s ‘better than takeout’, but I’m pretty sure that they’d happily scarf
it down nonetheless. Second, instead of beef, you could try swapping
for easier-to-work-with pork in its stead. To go this route, just use this marinade instead,
and do the same stir frying process that we just did. Then, your third choice and what we’ll do
today because this is us after all, is to sort of ‘hack together’ a kind of mimicry
of that passing through oil process using an oil quantity more relevant to the average
home kitchen. Because really, it’s not like we’re trying
to deep frying a 20 pound turkey or anything, we only need to submerge… thinly sliced
beef. Our beef is 2-3mm, so a half centimeter of
oil in a non-stick pan should be enough to get us most of the way there. Of course, because this is a lot less oil,
I like to get it up a little hotter at first – about 190 celcius or so – before dumping
the beef in. Also, you might need to slightly futz or flip
a couple pieces to cook it all through, but after a quick 45 seconds we can just dump
that all through a fine mesh sieve, and this’s reasonably indistinguishable to me at least. Then the second consideration… the cooking vessel. Now today I really wanted to use our non-stick
skillet here basically to just prove a point – that is, that while I really like my wok,
at it’s core it’s just a… hunk of steel, it’s not some sort of magic school bus to
flavorville. I will grant that there’s few moves that’re
definitely easier in the wok, but with an adjustment or two a non-stick is also perfectly
functional. So then, before frying, let’s remember again
WHY we were stir-frying. We want to layer our ingredients with the
following flavors: (1) oil infused with aromatics (2) sizzled wine and soy sauce and (3) the
final seasoning, whether sprinkled in or mixed in in sauce form. So, let’s just keep things uncomplicated. Medium low flame, 3-4 tablespoons of oil,
add in some minced garlic and ginger. Again, the point is just to infuse the oil,
so go as fast or as slow as you’re comfortable. Once it’s gotten fragrant, which was about
a minute on my end, we’ll sizzle in that wine, which is a little awkward for the wok-less. What I’ll do here is just up my flame to
high, kind of keep the aromatics on one side, hit the other side with the wine, and get
ready to cover because this will pop. After about ten seconds it should sound a
little less angry, so then you can uncover and mix stuff about. Add in your beef and after a nice coating
with the oil, swirl a teaspoon of soy sauce in a similar manner… and then in with the
blanched broccoli. You want to move quickly at this stage so
that the broccoli doesn’t release it’s water, so then in with a sauce and once that’s
thickened? Heat off. Drizzle in a half tablespoon oil for sheen,
and… out. So, the big question - is this… BETTER THAN TAKEOUT!!! Everyone claims it. “Better than Takeout”. But the question I want to leave you with
is… are all these dishes ‘better’, really? In reality, I’ve seen someone trying to
make a “better version” of dumplings without being even able to pleat one, or making a
“better siu mai” without knowing how to properly make a Cantonese meat filling, or
frying up some sort of meat that’s extremely dry looking in a not desirable way, or some
sort of “melt in your mouth beef and broccoli”, which, like, who wants beef and broccoli to
melt in their mouth? I get that “better than takeout” is just
something people say without thinking. But think for at least two seconds the implication
of the words – what you’re saying that you’re “improving” or “elevating”
this takeout-style Chinese food somehow. But how are you improving it? It’s certainly not technique. Is it because I’m adding too much oil, I’m not adding
too much MSG and all that stuff, it’s fresh, it’s fresh, it’s glorious… Y’know, it’s so unhealthy and so cheap
and so low quality, that you should be ashamed eating it. Because it must be so full of oil, sugar,
salt, MSG, all those things unworthy of your wholesome organic Erewhon smoothie lifestyle. Now, I’m definitely not here to hate on
a particular person some food blogger. I’m just wondering, why is it so often Chinese
food – or by extension other Asian cuisines – that so often get the “Better than Takeout”
label slapped on them? My only guess is that Chinese takeout and
the like is consider a cheap eat, something that’s always there, served in a flash,
often under some dim lights at NOT some exquisitely decorated atmosphere. Something that maybe deep down in people’s
heads, doesn’t deserve to be respected. A quick google search will give you Better
than Takeout Fried Rice, Better than Takeout Chow Mein, Better than Takeout Lo Mein...
you know, the cheap ol classics. But if you try to search ‘better than restaurant’
pasta… the general sense is “the 100 things I can do to measure my pasta up to restaurant
quality”. Again, I’m not trying to pick on anyone…
because again, it’s just a mindless saying. But if you actually take time to think about
the Better Than Takeout phenomenon, I think it’s deeply ignorant and incredibly condescending. It completely dismisses all that cooking tradition,
culinary skill, and that operational ability to create and manage such a big menu in a
small space. It overlooks the actual steps and processes
that it takes to arrive at this food, only left with a superficial observation of how
“quick and easy” these dishes are when grabbing the takeout boxes from the hands
of the hard-working people behind the stove. So is this better than takeout? I mean, we have a rough standard for releasing
a recipe that’s “90% of the way there to a quality restaurant”. So maybe, just maybe, in the words of the
La Choy dragon… it’s ‘about as good as the takeout kind’. So try it, we hope you like it, but at the
very least, I hope that we can all respect and appreciate the talented chefs and cooks
at all our favorite Chinese restaurants, whether takeout or otherwise, a little bit more. And of course, recipe’s in the description
box… again, huge thank you for everyone that’s supporting us on Patreon… we had
a great six years, I hope more great times ahead of us… and if you’re new here, subscribe
for more Chinese cooking videos. “Just as good as the takeout kind!” “Because it’s cooked in dragon fire!”
