Why Chinese Takeout Is So Silky and Delicious (and how to make it at home)

beef with broccoli is one of the most popular Chinese American foods of all time and it's one of my favorite things to order do you ever try to make it at home and it comes out like a little dry maybe a little chewy just not even close to a Chinese takeout restaurant but when you order take out it's like tender and it's got almost like a silky texture to it that's because there's a secret technique that Chinese restaurants used quickly tenderized beef pork chicken any kind of meat really turning them into tender velvety pieces of glistening meat that we all love and today we're going to learn how to do it to make some very good beef with broccoli at home now the technique in question is called velveting now velveting does two things actually does three it helps tenderize the meat it helps retain its juices and it helps create that silky texture it also gives us an opportunity to flavor the meat and we can do it all at the same time which is nice now right here I have a piece of flank steak I'm pretty sure normally a Chinese restaurant would use like a sirloin now the first important thing is to make sure you don't do these two things we do not want to cut the beef too thick and we do not want to cut it too long so that the pieces have to almost fold over each other to fit in your mouth and so with a flank steak you got the grains running down the meat and to make sure we don't cut them too long I'm going to slice this flank steak in half now this is a a full flank steak cut in half and then I'm going to cut this in half again now to get it to the shape I want I'm going to find the grains and first cut along them so now the length of that is cut in half so once you slice it thin it's a nice piece of meat that will fit into your mouth easily without you ever having to worry about it becoming too long now you can go ahead and just cut thin strips not shaved very thin say you wanted shredded beef you could slice this whole Chunk in half lengthwise and then every cut you would make would be more of a thin strip of beef which is actually how I used to request it when I would order takeout as a kit [Music] that's about a quarter of a whole flank steak that's enough for one portion which is what we're going to work on today you see I don't even think making Chinese takeout at home is a replacement for ordering Chinese takeout it's a good thing if you got some flank steak to use or a chicken to use up it's a utilization sort of recipe but I don't pretend to make it better than my favorite Chinese restaurant does they work a little bit of magic back there they've got the right gear and equipment and they know how to do this quick and fast so say I'm ordering it for a bunch of people I can't make it as fast or as good as I can when I order it usually when it's cooking for one or two people that's when this is a good thing to do at home into a bowl that we're going to marinate the beef in now like I said the velveting does a few things it tenderizes it helps with texture and juiciness and also flavors the beef so we're going to do all those things and first thing is the baking soda basically what this does is it raises the pH of the meat making it harder for those proteins to connect to each other when they cook making them a little bit more looser therefore more tender when they're done cooking I'm not a big science guy just know the rough idea and that's good enough for me and so we're going to need 1/4 of a teaspoon then we're going to go in with some salt a teaspoon 1/4 teaspoon of salt not too much cuz we have a lot of other salty ingredients but it still does need salt give it a mix next up about a/ te spoon of some soy sauce light soy sauce and then another half teaspoon of dark soy sauce dark soy sauce kind of goes more for the color it adds a deeper color the light soy sauce is more for the flavor and the salt and you can just sort of eyeball these things but if you want it's a half teaspoon also need a little bit of black pepper and about half teaspoon teaspoon of sugar a little half teaspoon of xaing wine if you have an Asian market you can get it there about a/ teaspoon and then a/ teaspoon of oyster sauce you really just want like very tiny bits of everything just so that the meat kind of sucks it up but it's like never really sitting in a pool of marinade then we're going to go in with some corn starch and that cornstarch is going to help with that velvety texture as well and we need just a half teaspoon and we want to mix it and almost massage it with our hands until that cornstarch sort of hydrates and you can almost feel the fibers of the meat loosening up so now we're just going to let this sit for about 20 30 minutes while we prepare the rest of the ingredients before I do though I forget hit it with a little glisten of oil I like sesame oil right before you put it in sort of locks in that Sheen a little bit regular oil will do also just a like a half teaspoon nothing too crazy next we got to deal with the broccoli and the aromatics which are going to be a little bit of Ginger and three cloves of garlic we'll deal with the broccoli in a second first for the garli garlic you just smash them get that skin off get the little root end off cut them in half smash breaking them down to smaller sizes allows so when you smash them they don't kind of explode all over the place and when you're able to smash them fairly hard they almost sort of mince on their own and you just kind of have to then run your knife through it a few more times to get it into a nice fine mix next on to the ginger now we don't need all This Ginger we just need a little bit of nub and this guy's a little old so I'm just going to kind of cut around the old bits we really don't need a ton we're going to see the grains kind of run down this way so if we slice down them it's going to be a nice easy slice a ginger is very fibrous so when you cut it with the grain you get these nicer slices then we can easily just stack these slices up slice them into very fine sticks almost like a Jew Julian and then just like we would any other dice turn that stack of sticks so it's perpendicular to the knife and then slice into a very fine mints you never want to really Chomp on any big bits of ginger in any dish really and then get that into the bowl with the garlic now for the broccoli we're just going to start to just kind of cut fettes right off the [Music] stock that's plenty for one serving so we can hold on to this this second half is enough for a second serving if you're serving two Now to turn these bigger fettes into nice smaller fettes we're going to take our knife cut down until you're right where the blade meets the flower and you can kind of just twist your knife and they'll kind of come out a more natural shape and say that's even too big right there again same thing twist peel twist peel now you want broccoli that's got a tiny bit of bite in the center but isn't overcooked and isn't too raw so you really got to nail the size of the broccoli broccoli aromatics prepped and remember the key to cooking Chinese recipe or a lot of other Asian recipes is to prepare everything in advance cuz it all comes together quickly on the stove if you're running around chopping things last minute you're setting yourself up for disaster get everything ready and we almost have everything ready we just need to make the sauce now back when I was a kid all I would ever order was beef with broccoli chicken with broccoli in a brown sauce which I'm pretty sure is like the standard when you order chicken with broccoli I just used it to distinguish it from like a garlic sauce or one of the other sauces so for me a brown sauce starts with a little bit of good chicken broth and by a little bit I mean maybe about 2 tablespoons we can always add a little bit later if we need more we also have about a tablespoon of cornstarch here for slurry I'm going to add about a tablespoon to that or as much as I need to create a nice little slurry maybe tablespoon and a half mix it all up and it looks a little thick so I'm just going to drizzle in a touch more of the stock I just want the slurry to be a little runny now that's ready to go now to the broth about 2 tbspoon of oyster sauce 1 tbsp of the light soy sauce 1 tbspoon of the dark and then about 1 and 1/2 to 2 tablespoons if you like it on the sweeter side of sugar and then finally a touch of MSG just for the Nostalgia there's nothing really wrong with it but you don't have to add it if you don't want just like a/4 teaspoon so now we've got our sauce this is all the ingredients prepped we've got our marinated tenderized flavored beef our broccoli ready to be blanched our aromatics ready to be sauteed and incorporated into the mix and then to finish our sauce and our corn starch slurry we're also going to need a little bit more of the shaing cooking wine a little bit of sesame oil that we're going to throw together in the pan and a little chicken stock just in case we may need to adjust some things which I don't foresee a needing to do so now we're going to start by blanching the broccoli so I've got a little pot of water coming up to a boil over here which leads us into talking about some of the cookwar now when it comes to making a dish like beef with broccoli at home the key is a pan that's going to retain heat so my go-to is the carbon steel pan from our sponsor today Maiden maiden's award-winning carbon steel frying pans are made in France and Sweden by the best Craftsmen and women who have been producing carbon steel pans for more than 300 years and it's the perfect hybrid between a cast iron pan and a stainless steel pan like a cast iron pan it has amazing heat retention and heat control but like a stainless steel pan it's light enough to maneuver and toss in your hand like this and it heats up quickly and like a cast iron pan the more you use it the more it naturally seasons and becomes almost like a non-stick surface and the carbon steel collection can go from the stove top to the oven and even in an open fire up to 1200° if that's the kind of way you like to cook and if you have the space which I don't they have amazing carbon steel walks for the home with a flat bottom that would be perfect if you like making Chinese food often at home like this so to save you money and to get geared up with some of maiden's amazing carbon steel products head on down to my link in the description and let's jump back into the recipe now that the water is up to a boil we can season it generously with salt then add the broccoli to the boiling water to quickly blanch and then set a timer for 60 seconds if your broccoli is bigger you may need 90 again we want the broccoli to be cooked but with a little bit of bite at the center of the stock nothing worse than overcooked broccoli in a dish like this after 60 seconds drain the broccoli and then shock them in cold water to stop the cooking a small batch like this you could just rinse under cold water now back at the stove we can get the carbon steel pan on the burner on high heat and let that get hot so that the pan starts slightly smoking then we can add a ring of oil around the pan enough to coat it and then add the beef and it's vital not to overcrowd the beef another reason why Chinese food at home for a large group doesn't make a whole lot of sense so spread them out so they make contact with the pan and usually a Chinese restaurant would stir constantly and that's cuz the gear is much hotter so they toss it constantly so nothing Burns we're working with weaker gear so we're going to let that meat sear for about 30 seconds to a minute and then with a spatula scoop underneath the meat and flip it color is great but it's not vital we just want to cook the beef hard and fast should cook no more than 1 to 1 and 1 half minutes then strain out the beef and catch the oil in a bowl we just needed about 2/3 of the way cooked at this point get the pan back on the stove and lower the heat to medium high and then add the garlic and ginger and some of that oil back into the pan and stir and cook for about 30 seconds then turn the heat off deglaze with a few tablespoons of the xaing wine turn the heat back on high and then after about 10 seconds add the beef back into the pan and toss it with the aromatics add about a teaspoon of sesame oil and then add the broccoli back into the pan then we're going to add the sauce but not all of it we want to add a little bit at a time just enough to glaze the beef we can always add more toss together see if there's enough sauce you want to look for everything getting glazed I add a touch more and then about 3/4 of the slurry reserving some just in case I need it later toss it all together stirring until the sauce is glazed and coating the beef and broccoli and it's shining and glistening and looking like beef and broccoli should now to plate obviously goes great with some good steamed rice but works great without if you're watching carbs just pile it high on a nice big white plate just like a classic Chinese restaurant growing up and you've got something surprisingly equivalent to your favorite beef and broccoli tender velvety glistening meat perfectly cooked glazed broccoli it's fast easy to make and is packed with flavor it's simply one of the greatest dishes of all time that to me looks just like a normal beef with broccoli I would get from Chinese take at restaurant tender it's Saucy but not too Saucy tons of flavor glazing the vegetable and the beef and the velveting that is the secret that you've been waiting for your whole life to make Chinese food taste good at home first recipe of the year happy New Year surprise surprise it's not Italian if you want the recipe the Link's going to be down in the description that's all that I have today gear up for a whole new year cuz I'm going to see you next time until then take care of yourself and go feed [Music] yourself

Channel: NOT ANOTHER COOKING SHOW

Views: 807,138

Keywords: Chinese Velveting why is Chinese food so silky and delicious, how to make Chinese takeout at home, how to make good beef with broccoli at home, not another cooking show, Stephen cusato, the food freak, Chinese recipes at home, easy Chinese food at home

Id: x95UUASZyrU

Length: 13min 38sec (818 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 17 2024