Beef with Broccoli | Kenji's Cooking Show

hey everyone it's kenji i'm at home and we're gonna make some beef and broccoli today so chinese american classic here um and one of my favorites growing up so first thing we got is some beef this happens to be flap steak um also known as sirloin flap or if you're in if you're in boston it's called steak tips this is butterflied which is how they do it out here in california um if you can't get flat meat um i would also recommend something like skirt steak or hanger steak or flank steak anything that has a sort of coarse grain like this is good because that's going to absorb marinade um and it's also going to be more tender so what i'm doing first so you'll notice the meat has a grain to it right the grain runs kind of this way right so what we first want to do is cut with the grain into pieces that are about about an inch and a half to two inches wide okay so with the grain first and then after that we're going to take each one 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 sort of what you're doing is shortening those muscle fibers so that your pieces end up more tender this is all going to go into a bowl this is a very easy easy easy dish and thankfully it's one that as long as you follow a few tips which i'm going to give you you can do indoors um you don't you don't need like a you don't need a fancy walk set up you don't need anything real powerful you can do it just on a regular old burner indoors in fact you could even do it um on an electric cooktop with a flat pan if you really want although um although contrary to what my previous employer contends or at least used to contend they may i think they've changed their minds about this more recently you don't get the same flavors that you get in a stir fry 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 fire and the way things get tossed they just don't taste quite the same when you're in a pan western pans are designed more for searing whereas in stir fries you don't really sear so much like you don't you're not really generally looking to build a crust or brown the exterior of a piece of meat um you're really looking to cook it really fast and drive off moisture really fast um and most of the color in a stir fry rather than from coming from the maillard reaction you know or caramelization those two browning reactions that happen with high heat it comes from the sauces all right so we got our meat here i have a separate cutting board that i put on top of my first one when uh whenever i work with meat that way it's easier to clean i don't have to worry about contaminating all my other stuff all right so get my knife cleaned so i can start working on my broccoli meanwhile i'm going to just marinate this meat you want to marinate the meat for at least about 15 minutes or so you don't need to go much longer than that so i got a little bit of light soy sauce probably about a teaspoon this is this is about three quarters of a pound of beef i'm kind of eyeballing everything but i'll put a link to um a recipe um a little bit of sesame oil some shashing wine about two teaspoons oops that's a little too much i don't want quite that much it's going to steam too much if we put that much in this is a little msg some 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 quarter plus an eighth of a teaspoon that i just put in there um what the baking soda does is it's it uh tenderizes the meat so i'm not you know i'm not exactly sure of the mechanism cooks illustrated my my old employer cooks illustrated they put they wrote an article saying that it has to do with um raising the ph will prevent um some kind of cross-linking of proteins so that it doesn't tighten up as much when you cook it and thus it stays more tender and it retains more moisture i'm not really reading it it sounded a little bit kind of hand wavy so i'm not really sure if that's the reason but suffice it to say adding baking soda to your beef um or your chicken or any kind of any kind of protein um that's that's the key to getting it really nice and soft and tender it's what they do at chinese restaurants um that's how they get their meat nice and tender and you also want to massage it pretty roughly so you see how i'm really working that marinade in um you know just as just as massaging a knot in your in your muscles or getting a knot in your muscles massage will help loosen it up and tenderize it massaging meat will also loosen it up and tenderize it so it doesn't so that's more tender when you cook it all right so next i'm gonna set that aside we're going to let that marinate for about 15 minutes so at some point in this video i'll probably do a jump cut because i don't have enough stuff to do to fill up the next 15 minutes but we are going to what we are going to do next is get our broccoli so this is actually broccolini which is what i prefer for this um or you can use chinese broccoli um so what i'm gonna do is the stems i'm gonna cut them kind of at an angle like that just until the florets get separated and that's it okay the stems are a little bit tougher which is why you want to cut them into thinner strips whereas the florets you can just leave whole um you can do this with regular broccoli or do it the exact same way cut the stems on a bias into thin pieces leave the florets whole um and with real you know real large broccoli european style broccoli or american style broccoli you might even want to consider peeling the bottoms of the stems the stem broccoli stems are actually i remember seeing this on jacques when i was a a young kid and then again more recently i think on one of his rerun pbs reruns he talks about how um how uh the the stems of the broccoli are the most broccoli or the most broccoli parts of the broccoli if you know what i mean all right so i got some water going here we're gonna par cook this broccoli steam it sort of a combination of steam slash oil just for just for about a minute okay we don't want to we don't want it to turn soft we just want to let it minute let it go for about a minute just so it's nice and tender crisp high heat just a little bit of water in there and meanwhile i'm going to come over here and make my sauce all right so for my sauce dark soy sauce about a tablespoon light soy sauce about a tablespoon so light soy sauce actually has stronger flavor than dark soy sauce dark soy sauce typically you add its main contribution is color oyster sauce this is going to be my main thing here it's about two tablespoons of oyster sauce wine we're going to add separate and then we're going to also make a little cornstarch slurry on the side so we probably won't use all this but i'm getting a couple tablespoons of cornstarch and about a tablespoon of water cold water if you had hot water this corn starch will not will form little bubbles that have dry starch in the inside and you won't be able to dissolve them all with cold water all right so broccoli is done drain it off get into the bowl i'm going to use the same bowl to serve in later all right now our wok is ready for our stir fry our broccoli is ready to go oh the last sauce ingredient about a tablespoon of sugar so again in here there is um a couple teaspoons or a tablespoon or so of dark soy light soy um tablespoon each of dark soy light soy about two tablespoons of oyster sauce about a tablespoon of sugar and that is our whole sauce here so sweet savory salty that's the sort of classic use of broccoli sauce flavor all right that's good to go now our last two ingredients are aromatics there's garlic and ginger this happens to be actually just that pre-peeled garlic which is not the greatest garlic to use and i know i know some people vehemently are opposed to pre-peeled garlic but sometimes i just get it because i'm feeling lazy so smash smash smash smash don't need to be super fine or precise with the garlic in this dish okay good enough and ginger i'm gonna save these chunks for later and i'm gonna take a piece like this take off the skin you can also if you if you uh find it easier or if you you know don't want to fuzz around with your knife like this you can peel ginger with a spoon just scrape it with a spoon and the skin will come right off um i don't want to bother messing up a spoon right now so i don't all right and so for the ginger i'm going to cut it against the grain into these kind of coins okay and then similar to garlic i'm gonna smack it like that you see how it breaks up along with his grains and then it just needs some rough chopping [Applause] and it's good to go all right i'm gonna let that beef marinate now for about 15 minutes um and so and now through the magic of shutting off my camera and turning it back on again 15 minutes later we are ready to cook so walk high heat um this is a flat bottomed 14 inch heavy gauge walk so about 2 millimeters thick is what you want on a wok um one and a half to two millimeters uh and this is carbon steel uh well seasoned so that means it's sort of you know it's it's essentially non-stick when you when you season carbon steel well enough um and the key to cooking indoors on a wok is that you don't ever want to crowd the pan um so i'm doing a small enough batch um that i can probably do this all in one go but if i was doing any more meat than to say i was doing like a full pound of meat i would sear the meat off in two separate batches and transfer to a bowl in between then at the end i would add everything back in because indoors an indoor walk burner you know your your home range probably has an output of maybe 15 000 btus max whereas a uh you know or maybe if you have a real high-end stove 25 or 30 000 whereas a walk burner at a restaurant when they do large batches that's more like 160 to 200 000 btus but really you want like a minimum of about a hundred thousand btus uh in order to properly stir-fry a large like a full quantity of meat um so in this case we're going to just instead we're going to preheat really well want that oil to be nice and smoking hot the wok to be hot all around and we need everything ready to go so i got my marinated meat i've got my aromatics i've got my sauce my cornstarch slurry and my broccoli oh and finally my serving platter oh no i'm gonna put it right back into this broccoli bowl that's right okay ready here we go so once we start it goes fast okay so i'm gonna put my beef in first spread it out use as much surface area as i can now with a real hot you know a real powerful walk you could be tossing and stirring this the whole time um on a home range like this though it's better to let it sit for just a little bit just so that it really has a chance to start searing through you don't really want much color to develop on it you don't need it to sort of brown or anything but you do want it to start sort of steering through without steaming so just about 20 30 seconds on that side we'll give it a stir and a toss okay and once it's almost all the way cooked through once there's no not much pink or red remaining on the exterior i'm gonna go in with my aromatics and my garlic and my ginger [Music] still in the highest possible heat on an indoor setup like this i'm going to go high heat the entire time whereas with a you know an outdoor setup or a big or more powerful setup i would lower the heat a little bit to make sure that nothing burns okay so now it's starting to smell real nice the aromatics are softened the beef is essentially cooked through [Music] i'm gonna stir up my sauce and go right in and kind of go around the sides that helps give it a little bit more of that seared flavor all right and then my broccoli goes in just a touch of a cornstarch slurry let's see how that does [Applause] that looks about right to me i don't think we need any more cornstarch than that and that is done all right chinese-american beef and broccoli with oyster sauce i love that sweet sour sorry sweet and savory very aromatic yes you can have a little bit trouble let me cool down for you good girl now wasn't that quick and easy all right guys gals non-binary panels wear a mask stay safe be healthy and i'll see you next time real quick before i go i wanted to quickly show you how i uh keep my walk seasoned so all i did was scrub this out with um this little scrubby guy and some water just like that scrubbed it out okay under running water and now what i'm going to do put it directly over get all the excess water out put it directly over a burner this is what i do when i walk every time i cook in it same with my carbon steel same with my cast iron this is how i made keep my stuff maintained keep the seasoning there keep it nice and non-stick [Music] now what we're going to do is just let let this heat up until that water evaporates okay then i'm gonna grab a little oh i was gonna say i would grab a little paper towel i don't know where that went though here let me grab a little napkin here i think i have them outside all right i'm going to grab a little napkin put some oil in there not too much and then just rub it out [Music] and that's it you want to basically get the oil in there and then sort of pretend like you accidentally did it and you're trying to get everything back out okay that's all you have to do every once in a while i'll also do the outside but i don't do that every single time i uh every single time i cook in it all right now for real guys guys guys gals non-binary pals i will see you later [Music] you

Channel: J. Kenji López-Alt

Views: 526,506

Rating: 4.9309521 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: iEs3qXQvg6M

Length: 18min 39sec (1119 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 22 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/monkeyman80]

Kenji if you’re lurking where can you find flap in ca? I’ve been searching for awhile since you first talked about it.