Chris Rywalt's Beef with Broccoli no Broccoli with Broccoli Recipe

Perhaps this will become a weekly Guest Column; Pretty Lady is thrilled that Chris is so on the ball, particularly as she has been on vacation while on vacation.


This recipe came about because my lovely wife Dawn is a meatatarian. The only vegetables she'll eat are corn, peas, and potatoes, which you'll note aren't exactly vegetables so much as starch in a thin vegetable package. She's been known to watch our daughter eat a pile of mashed potatoes and then insist, "You need some vegetables! Have some corn!"

Thus for many years whenever we ordered Chinese to be delivered, she'd ask for "beef with broccoli no broccoli." That is, she wanted beef in brown sauce. But if she ordered "beef with brown sauce," all sorts of random things would arrive, including, once, beef in oyster sauce. Whereas if she ordered "beef with broccoli no broccoli," she'd get what she wanted, which was beef in the same brown sauce as beef with broccoli, minus the vegetation.

Eventually I decided to try to duplicate the recipe on my own, so I developed a brown sauce I could make. This was Beef with Broccoli No Broccoli.

After a while of making this, I realized I missed the broccoli. So I worked on including it in the recipe, along with tofu, snow peas, and mushrooms. The resulting recipe, of course, would then be Beef with Broccoli No Broccoli with Broccoli. Which is what you're going to make.

Brown Sauce
1.25 cups water
0.33 cups soy sauce
grated ginger
grated garlic
2 tbs (6 squirts) honey
2 tbs corn starch

Beef
1.5 lbs London broil/top sirloin/top round/whatever

Other Stuff (all of which is optional)
1.5 lbs broccoli crowns (about three trees)
0.25 lbs snow peas (a handful or so)
some shitake mushrooms
1 package (1 lb) extra firm tofu, cubed

Start by boiling a pot of water for blanching the broccoli and snow peas. This is a key step, because the vegetables will never cook in a stir-fry unless you parcook them first. Wash the vegetables and cook them in the boiling water until they're tender and bright green, about ten minutes. A little less wouldn't hurt. Then strain from boiling water and plunge into ice water (not just cold from the tap -- add about half a tray of ice cubes) for five minutes to stop the cooking and set the color. Strain and set aside.

Now, I've noticed that adding the broccoli to the stir-fry tends to thin out the sauce. Could be there's an enzyme in the broccoli which breaks down the corn starch. Or could be there's water still in the broccoli leaves. So I like to run the broccoli through the salad spinner a few times to get it as dry as possible.

While the broccoli is cooking, make the brown sauce. Basically it's just mixing everything together. Note I've haven't given you instructions on the garlic and ginger.

About ginger: Fresh ginger goes bad way faster than I use it. So I freeze it, and when I need some, it's very easy to scrape off the skin with a knife and run the root over a microplane grater. Then back in the freezer it goes. I grate off about a half-inch of root. You can use powdered ginger if you don't have fresh: Start with about a teaspoon and increase as you like. I find the more I eat ginger the more I use.

About garlic: If you're feeling ambitious, mince it. I never, ever feel that ambitious, so I just grate two or three cloves using the microplane grater right into the sauce. You don't even need to cut off the fuzzy end, because that's what you hold it by so you don't grate your fingers.

(Pretty Lady's note: Chris, have you never heard of a garlic press? The kind with the hinged pestle produces the most direct leverage, and can easily push an entire clove of garlic through in one squeeze. Pretty Lady has made a good start on your Christmas list.)

About honey: I never measure honey because it's a mess. Alton estimates a good squeeze as about one teaspoon. Three teaspoons equals a tablespoon. Therefore 6 squirts is about 2 tablespoons. If you don't have honey, use sugar in about equal amounts.

Now you've got your sauce, broccoli, and snow peas ready. Beef time!

Many different cuts of meat can be used for this. Some are more economical than others. Flank steak, sirloin, top round, even chuck are fine. Also fancier beef like New York strip or whatever excites you. Generally I look for the cheaper cuts usually labeled "for London broil."

The key about any cuts like that -- top round for example -- is that it's a cut with a fair amount of connective tissue. That means if you overcook it, it will turn to shoe leather. My mother was an expert at this. She could take the most expensive piece of beef and convert it to moose meat. So there are two keys to properly cooking this cut: Slice it thin across the grain and cook it on high heat very quickly.

First, then, slice it up. Across the grain, no thicker than an eighth of an inch. Try to keep the slicing consistent. Or, if you have a butcher you're friendly with, have them slice it for you.

Next, cook it. I have a Calphalon anodized aluminum wok I bought years and years ago. It's been absolutely the most versatile and useful cooking vessel I've ever owned. I can use it as anything: Frying pan, wok, saucier, saucepan. I've cooked almost everything in it. And it's almost nonstick, it cleans up so easily. It was wildly expensive and for years I joked about it being our Yuppie Frying Pan, but one day I realized it was worth every nickel (pennies not being worth anything any more).

The important thing about cooking the beef is it must be hot and it must be fast. So set your frying pan or wok or cast iron skillet or Dutch oven on high heat -- as high as you can -- and let it sit until it's as hot as you can let it get without scorching. Hot hot hot. I give my wok about ten minutes minimum on my extra-strength burner.

Add a little oil to the cooking vessel and swirl to coat. I use canola for this but you could use peanut oil or possibly olive. Do not use anything light and fruity, like extra virgin olive oil, because it will burn and get unpleasant. Like, oops, I burned down my house unpleasant. Or anyway it should if your pot is hot enough. I like to spray the oil on with a spritzer bottle -- this helps the meat stick less.

Now throw the beef in right after the oil. As the Frugal Gourmet used to say, "Hot pan cold oil food won't stick." Begin moving it around immediately. Don't just toss it around randomly, either: When you see people do this on cooking shows, they look very blithe about it, but they're just making it look easy. What you need to do is keep the beef moving and make sure you turn any pieces when they brown so they sear as equally as possible on all sides. That means moving the pink towards the bottom of the wok.

The fat will start to render out of the beef and in a short time it'll look less like stir-frying and more like boiling. That's the time to add the brown sauce mix we made earlier. If your cut has
less fat, just add the sauce when all the meat is seared nicely. Recall that the key is to not cook the meat too long or it will become strips of moose. Remember my mother!

Let the sauce cook and stir it every so often. You should start to see the sauce thicken and darken as it gets closer to boiling, starting from the sides of the wok. Once all the sauce has thickened, you can do what I do, which is remove about half the beef with sauce and set it aside for my wife; or you can add your mushrooms, which you've cut the stems from and washed thoroughly. Let them cook for a minute or two, then add the broccoli and snowpeas and, if you want, some cubed extra firm tofu. Stir everything together and cook until everything is heated through, about two or three minutes.

Serve over rice. If you want to know how to make rice -- um, buy a rice cooker. That's what I did.