This is not your average beef stir-fry, this is super tender and glossy!
Just check that out! And beautiful spicy Korean flavours too.
What more could you ask for?
There can be so many things wrong with a beef stir-fry. The beef is tough, the beef is dry,
the beef is unappealing, not tasty. All those things.
But we're going to fix all of those problems for you with a few little tips and tricks.
Let's have a look at the beef first. I'm using ribeye. I love this cut because
it has a mixture of both fat and meat. Fat means flavour, my friends,
which I love.but you could use striploin as well. Rump steak is really good for stir frying as well.
Umm... What else? Scotch fillet is good.
Scotch fillet is the same as ribeye depending on where you are.
But anyway, all those things but what I like to do with
any cut of steak that it is...is slice it on the diagonal. So doing that thins out
your strip of beef and it also means that your pieces of beef will go a
little bit further. So we can get a few more strips out of them.
Now the thin slice is also crucial for maintaining a really beautiful tender
piece of beef at the end as well. Now the other really crucial part for this beef
stir-fry is the marinade. It's not only going to add flavor but this is what I'm
going to use to tenderize the beef as well. So I'm going to start off with some
Korean gochujang chili paste. This is a fermented chili paste, it has loads of
umami flavors and saltiness and a little bit of heat as well. And to that
I'm going to add some soy sauce and some finely chopped spring onions. So that's
the flavor part, now we're into the texture ingredients. So first of all some
cornflour. It's also known as corn starch in the US in case you guys are a
bit confused. This will help to thicken up the marinade and create like a really
glossy film on the outside of the beef. So it gives you that beautiful soft
silky texture. Now this next ingredient is baking soda and this one is all about
the browning and the tenderization. So this will lower the pH of the sauce or
marinade which then will encourage faster browning which means our beef
cooks quicker in the wok and stays nice and juicy. And now we're going to add our
beef. Now you're really got to get in here
with your hands guys. I want to make sure that every little strip of beef is
coated in that beautiful marinade and your fingers are the best utensil for
that. So now the stir-fry sauce. Really simple, just some oyster sauce, soy sauce,
a little bit of beef stock here. You could just use some water to thin it out
but the beef stock is going to add a little bit of extra flavor as well. And a little
dash of dark soy sauce just for a bit of color. And then some rice vinegar and
some sugar. Okay so now we're at the sizzling part, always my favorite bit. We want
a really nice hot wok or a very large frying pan and add in some oil, garlic,
some onion. Now spread that beef out because I want the maximum amount of
heat on the surface area of as much beef as possible. Leave that for about a
minute or so and then toss it through. Straightaway you can see we've already
got some beautiful color on that beef. And another 30 seconds to get a little
bit of color. Now when your beef looks almost cooked, you want to add in some
strips of carrot.
And then some kimchi. I love this, it adds tangy funkiness to the stir-fry. And now
the sauce.
And now you can see everything has turned magically glossy. Shiny. I'm just going to
toss through some spring onions. And now I'm going to turn the heat off because I
always like to add my sesame oil at the end. So saving that until the end means
we're going to get a really bright fresh sesame flavor. A lot fo the time you can
lose some of that flavor if you add it at the beginning. Now while that's
piping hot you want to get it straight out to eat.
And then a final little sprinkling of sesame seeds and if that doesn't look
good enough to eat.
Look at that shiny beef. Wow.
The first thing that hits you is that beautiful spicy funky kind of
kimchi sauce and that beef just melts. It literally just melts. Mmm it's really yum.