Stir Fried Beef and Onions

Many Chinese dishes are stir fried and served with rice. It's very common to have a protein, a vegetable, and some sort of sauce stir fried, with the dish served family-style.

I often like a stir-fry with beef and onions. However, stir-frying like this is actually very versatile; once you know the technique you can easily replace the onions with another vegetable like broccoli, or the beef with another meat like chicken or pork, or a different kind of sauce. I often make a traditional sauce with oyster sauce and sugar, but you can also substitute something like a beef stock based brown sauce (there are plenty of those on the internet).

Full disclosure: I never actually measure anything when I do stir-fry like this, instead largely thinking of ingredients in terms of ratios or taste. I tried to supply estimated measurements as much as I could, but you can consider all of these measurements flexible and can adjust to your liking.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 lb flank steak, sliced into 1/8 to 1/4 inch slices across the grain
  • For beef, flank steak is the ideal cut, since cutting it across the grain will produce the most tender meat.
  • For chicken, you can use chicken breast sliced across the grain.
  • For pork, try something like pork loin.
• 1 large white onion, sliced into strips (half-moons)
  • For broccoli, cut the broccoli into bite-sized florets with about 1 inch stems. For particularly large florets, slice them in half lengthwise down the stem to help them cook faster.
• 4 cloves of garlic, minced
  • Roughly 1 clove per 1/2 pound of meat, and 1 clove per onion
  • Optionally, you can do the same amount of aromatics but as 1/2 garlic 1/2 ginger instead.
• 4 tbsp cooking oil
  • About 1 tbsp per 1/2 lb of meat, and 1 tbsp for the onion

Marinade

• 3 tablespoons shaoxing rice wine
  • Shaoxing rice wine is a fortified Chinese rice wine very often used in Chinese dishes with meat. Ideally, use a drinking-grade Shaoxing wine if you can find it; if not, you can find Shaoxing cooking wine in some Asian aisles or the Asian grocery store.
  • In a pinch, if you can't find any shaoxing wine, you can use sherry cooking wine as an alternative.
• 3 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1.5 tablespoons sesame oil
• 1.5 tablespoons corn starch
  • Marinating the meat with corn starch is a Chinese stir fry technique called velveting, which is the reason why the meat in Chinese stir-fry is so tender despite being fully cooked. The corn starch draws the marinade moisture into the meat and seals it inside, protecting the meat from the heat and preventing it from drying out while it's being cooked.

Generally, you're looking for a 2:2:1:1 ratio of shaoxing/soy sauce/sesame oil/corn starch, with 1 tablespoon of soy sauce per 1/2 pound of meat.

Sauce

• 6-8 tbsp oyster sauce
  • Roughly, 1.5-2 tbsp per 1/2 lb of meat and 1.5-2 tbsp for the 1 onion
• 3 tbsp sugar

Oyster sauce is fairly salty, so the sugar cuts the saltiness. The sugar is adjusted to taste, as you'll see below, so it might end up as more or less than 3 tbsp.

Directions

1. Slice your meat thinly into 1/4 to 1/8 inch slices across the grain, and place in a bowl.
2. Add your marinade ingredients, and use your hands to combine until the meat is fully coated and the corn starch is fully absorbed into the liquid. If your marinade has too much liquid you can add a bit more corn starch; if it's too dry and the corn starch isn't absorbing you can add a bit of water.
3. Cover the meat with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 30 minutes, so the corn starch can fully coat the meat.
4. Heat a wok on very high heat.
   • This is important - stir-fry like this needs to be done on very high heat. It helps the velveting work better since the meat is basically almost flash-fried into sealing the moisture inside. Additionally, this will get the best sear on the ingredients. If you try to do this on something like medium heat, you're basically just going to boil the meat.
   • A gas range works best for this.
5. Heat 3 tbsp of cooking oil until hot. Add 3 cloves of minced garlic and stir in the oil until aromatic (you can smell the cooked garlic).
   • At very high heat, this will happen extremely quickly, like 10-15 seconds.
6. Add the meat, and stir fry continuously until the meat is mostly cooked. For beef, medium-well is fine. For other meats like chicken or pork, you'll want to fully cook them. Remove the meat from the wok and set aside for now.
7. Clean out the wok (wiping out the inside is sufficient) if your wok is prone to sticking.
8. Heat 1 tbsp of cooking oil on high heat again. Similarly, add 1 clove of minced garlic and stir until aromatic.
9. Add in the vegetables, and stir-fry until cooked. You want the vegetable to be mostly soft but still have a little bit of crunch.
10. You're done stir-frying, so turn the heat down to medium-high. Re-add the meat to the wok and stir to combine.
11. Add the oyster sauce, and stir to distribute. Once the oyster sauce is distributed, add the sugar and stir until combined. You can start with a smaller amount of sugar like 2 tablespoons, taste, and add more as necessary to your preference. Keep in mind that you'll serve and eat it with rice, so it'll seem less salty in the end when you eat it with the rice. If the sauce is too thick, you can add a tablespoon or two of water at the end to thin it out.
12. Remove from heat and serve with rice.