I hope Boston can sleep safer tonight. We're all wicked glad they've got the guy.
Anyway, after making a quick run to the grocery store to pick up the necessary ingredients, I began to assemble dinner, beginning with what I like to call "the holy trinity" of Chinese cooking in my kitchen: ginger, chili sauce (or Sriracha), and toasted sesame seeds.
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| The holy trinity of Betsey's Chinese cooking. |
Now, this may not necessarily be true for other cooks (and certainly with Chinese cooks, who have much more sophisticated Chinese cooking knowledge), but they're the ingredients I always have on hand whenever we have a hankering for some stir fry or other Chinese dish.
I love making Chinese-inspired dishes. They're quick and tasty, and you don't even have to leave your house to get it. Or, as one of my favorite comedians, Jim Gaffigan, would say, you don't even have to put on pants to answer the door for the delivery guy (sorry about the SUPER low quality video...why do people on YouTube insist on videotaping their TV screens?!).
Beef and Pepper Stir-Fry
Prep time: 5 min.
Cook time: 10 min.
Ingredients
- Canola or vegetable oil
- Beef cut into strips...pick whatever's on sale from your local friendly beef guy
- Ground black pepper (about 1/2 teaspoon)
- Ground ginger (about 1/4 teaspoon)
- 1 white onion, cut into chunks
- 1 green pepper, cut into chunks
- As many diced Thai peppers as you can stand!
- 2 c. white rice, cooked (I used instant, and I always put just a tidge bit of rice vinegar into the water as I'm cooking it so that the rice ends up nice and sticky. Just make sure you prepare it fresh or heat it up so you don't have a hot beef and veggie mixture and cold rice. Blegh.)
- Low sodium soy sauce
- Hot/spicy mustard
- Chili sauce or Sriracha
- 1 Tablespoon toasted sesame seeds
- 1 teaspoon brown sugar
Instructions
- Over medium/medium-high heat, heat up 1 tablespoon of oil to the point where it's almost smoking.
- When the oil is good and hot, throw in your beef strips, season with ground black pepper and ginger and cook until brown, about 5 minutes.
- While the beef is cooking, mix up your sauce: in a small bowl, combine several really good shakes of your soy sauce (until you have about a scant quarter cup of soy sauce), a good squirt of your mustard, a hefty glob of Sriracha or chili sauce, your sesame seeds, and the brown sugar. Set aside. Give it a taste, and if you like it spicier, you're crazy but free to add more chili paste. If you want to take a bit of the bite off of the chili sauce, add a bit more brown sugar. I LOVE adding brown sugar to these sorts of dishes because when it hits the hot pan it'll caramelize a bit and you get this beautiful, deep, well-rounded flavor. Anyway, back to the recipe...
- Add your onion and peppers to the pan and cook a few minutes to take a little bit of the crisp off of the veggies.
- Drizzle your sauce over the beef and veggie mixture and let cook about 3-4 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Plate your dish! I always serve my stir fry dishes by putting my rice in a base layer in a big serving bowl and then topping it with the beef/veggie/sauce mixture so the sauce kind of gets soaked up into the rice, but I've always wanted to get some of those cute ceramic Chinese take-out boxes to dish them up in. :)
This is a go-to recipe in our house, and you can modify it to fit your taste buds (use chicken or pork, different veggies, or change up the sauce). Plus, it's super quick and inexpensive to make. But it disappears just as quickly!
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| Just a few minutes before this photo was taken, this serving dish was heaping full of stir fry. |
Now that Matt and I are good and full, and we know that Boston can go to bed safe and sound, we're headed to bed as well. We old folks have a bedtime of 10 p.m. or sooner. This is what graduate school does to people. Sad.
Anyway, good night all! If you have any good ideas for other Chinese recipes to try, please let me know! I'm always excited about a new one to add to my repertoire!
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