Stir Fry Beef Two Ways

We don’t eat a lot of beef in my house. A few years ago my wife became insistent on cutting back for environmental reasons, I also cut back for health reasons, too many purines in red meat can cause health issues with cholesterol and gout, but everything in good moderation. I still love a steak, although eat it far less frequently than I used to. You all know I also love asian flavors, and in this application sometimes I can sneak a few steak dishes in, so here are two long marinade recipes that are pretty quick and easy.

Miso Rubbed Hanger Steak Sandwiches

I recently hit a small gold mine at my local international market in the Japanese aisle - Bull Dog Worcestershire sauce. I mentioned the controversial sauce in my last blog about korean fried chicken - controversial because I have also written about Lea and Perrins being the standard for Worcestershire sauce - I stand by that. But if you can find Bull Dog, it’s the top shelf special occasion version to the known favorite. I’ve also recently discovered that hanger steak is a very underutilized cut of beef if prepared properly.

By “prepare properly” I mean long marinade, for 24-48 hours.

Marinade Ingredients:

• 1-2 tbsp good miso paste

• 1 tbsp good Worcestershire sauce

• 2 tbsp soy sauce

• 6 cloves roughly chopped garlic

• 1 shot vodka

Thinly slice your steaks, chop your garlic, and combine your ingredients in a mixing bowl, let sit in refrigerator format least 24 hours. When marinating proteins always use some sort of odorless, flavorless alcohol in the marinade. The alcohol helps begin to break down the protein cell structure giving you a much more tender meat when cooking.

Cooking:

I simply cooked these off on high heat in a stovetop skillet with onions. You will want to add a dash of oil - I use olive oil with a touch of toasted sesame oil to add to the flavor but any oil with a high smoke point will work. Because the meat is sliced fairly thin the steak won’t take long to cook. Two to three minutes on each side for medium rare.

You are also going to want to shake off the marinade before adding your cuts to the hot pan and be sure to reserve the remaining marinade to make your sauce.

Sauce:

To make an easy sauce from the remaining marinade simply remove the beef from the skillet. I left the onions in to help with flavor and caramelizing them, but that is optional. You are going to want to add a 1/2 cup of water to the marinade because of the high salt content of both the Worcestershire and Soy sauces. Keep the pan on high heat and continue stirring to reduce. Add a starch slurry using corn starch or potato starch to help thicken the sauce. A goof rule for sauce is when you think you have reduced it enough, reduce it for 2 minutes longer. It is always misleading how loose a glaze or sauce still is when it is bubbling. Add the meat back in the pan to toss in your garlic soy glaze and spoon the remaining sauce over the top of the plate.

Serve:

Pile the beef and onions high on any soft bread. In this case I just used sesame hamburger buns, but hoagie rolls or Kaiser rolls wether toasted or soft would be just as good. These saucy sandwiches get messy so make sure you have plenty of napkins on hand, but they are a hearty and wildly flavorful bite!

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Stir Fry Ginger Beef and Asparagus

Ingredients in my recipes are always meant to be a guide, add your own signature flare to make it your own.

Marinade:

• 2 tbsp mirin

• 2 tbsp dark soy sauce

• 1 tbsp Bull Dog Worcestershire sauce

• white pepper to taste

• 1 raw egg (to help thicken and bind)

• 1 shot vodka

• 8 cloves garlic (minced)

• 1 medium ginger root (minced)

• cornstarch slurry (to thicken the remaining marinade into sauce after cooking)

Other:

• 20oz sirloin steak cut into strips

• 2 tbsp toasted sesame oil for cooking

• 2 cups white rice (seasoned with rice vinegar)

• cornstarch slurry (to thicken sauce)

• 1 cup water (for sauce)

Veg:

• 1 green bell pepper

• 1 vidalia onion

• 1/2 carrot

• 1 bunch asparagus

• 1 bunch scallions

• dried red chilies

I am fairly new to wok cooking and am still learning the techniques. I wouldn’t recommend using a wok unless you are using a gas flame. Even then usually a wok requires a specialized burner. I remove the lid to my gas burner that distributes the flame evenly so instead I have a single torch of high volume fire to heat the wok properly. This probably isn’t safe, since most wok cooking stations are controlled by a gas pedal and have constantly running water to reduce risk, therefore I do not recommend doing it, but otherwise it will be very difficult to get the wok to the proper heat.

Another aspect of wok cooking is having to cook off your dish in stages. I failed to take a photo of cooking only the beef, and then removing it, then cooking only the asparagus and carrots, and removing them. The third thing to hit the wok were my aromatics, the garlic, onions, and green bell peppers, as you can see from the steak residue left from earlier..

Once the aromatics cooked off in the remaining oil I added in the dried chilies, the remainder of the marinade, as well as a 1/2 cup of water, and cornstarch slurry to help thicken.

The original marinade turned stir fry sauce is a spin on classic teriyaki, that traditionally is made from soy sauce, mirin, and sake - this version used vodka and Bull Dog Worcestershire sauce as well, and kicks up in flavor even further with the addition of the aromatics. You can add a pinch of sugar to sweeten, more chili oil or flake for spice, sesame oil for fragrance, even orange juice or citrus as acid for a sweet and savory balance. The options are only limited by your imagination.

Heat and reduce the sauce to a thick glaze.

Once your sauce is thickened to your liking, add the previously cooked off meat and veg and toss to coat completely.

I added chopped scallion at the very end for more texture and flavor. The key to this kind of cooking is layering the textures. Make sure when you first cook the carrots and asparagus you only par cook them, maybe for 3 min in the wok. They will finish when you add everything together at the end, and it will ensure you have some textural crunch and freshness to the dish.

I served this stir fry over white rice and topped with some togarashi Japanese pepper flake.

Both of these stir fry beef recipes are fairly easy to make and very adjustable for your pallet or dietary preferences. The first can be served over rice or noodles instead of as a sandwich, and both have a huge range of other vegetables (water chestnuts, bamboo shoots, broccoli, snap peas, cabbage, baby corn, or bean sprouts - just to name a few) that can be substituted. Additionally, both of these concepts as recipes can be made completely new by adding additional flavors to marinades, or using the same marinades, flavors, and methods with a different protein such as chicken, pork, or shrimp - but I find this combination to work best with steak.

Check out @ReebzKitchen on Instagram and let me know if there are any recipes you’d like to see on the blog in the future!