The Cottage Smallholder

Photo: Oyster mushrooms

Skirt of beef (aka flank steak, Philadelphia steak) or even rump or sirloin are superb in a stir-fry when sliced thinly and cooked quickly. We keep mentioning this because skirt is 30% of the cost of sirloin and on the same level of flavour and texture. Sirloin can sometimes be disappointing but skirt is always good, and far more tender and tastier than rump. And it is so cheap by comparison!

The great features about a stir-fry are (1) you need very little meat (2) you can add almost any vegetable that you have to hand. Danny used Oyster Mushrooms tonight because he got them at a bargain discount price at Tesco – two packs of 125g for £0.23 each.

Sorry about posting two stir-fry articles on successive days but it has been a long day of planting flowers and Danny cooked supper using the small remainder of our skirt of beef. It was really very good and is worthy of publishing.

He based tonight’s dish on one that he found on a great new Chinese recipe site Rice Palette, with a few Danny tweaks. Watch the video to get a quick overview and mental picture of the cooking sequence.

Beef stir fry for 2 hungry people

Ingredients for the noodles

3 nests of noodles

1.5 litres of boiling water (500 ml per nest)

1 tsp vegetable granules (bouillon)

Ingredients for the stir-fry

100g to 250 g skirt of beef, or rump / sirloin /fillet steak, sliced thinly into 2mm chunks (we had exactly 200 g of skirt and it was a perfect meal. You could get away with as little as 100g)

200g to 300g of broccoli florets (a head may have 8 to 12 branches – each branch has many smaller florets. Chop off the florets and dump the thicker stalks. Then weigh the florets)

100g Pak Choi (optional) washed and white bits chopped from green bits (both used)

125g Oyster mushrooms (optional), washed and roughly chopped

6g of finely chopped garlic cloves (2 or 3 plump ones or 5 to 6 home grown smaller ones)

2 tsp brown sugar (or white will do fine too)

3 tsp cornflour (corn starch in N America). 1 tsp in mug #1 and 2 tsp in another mug #2

1 tbsp olive oil

1 tbsp soya sauce

1 tbsp oyster sauce

1 tsp sesame oil (optional)

0.5 tsp of ground black pepper

125 ml (half a cup) of chicken stock – one quarter of a chicken stock cube in 125 ml of boiling water (or 125 ml of plain water optionally)

Method – cook the noodles first. They keep well.

1 – Boil the 1.5 litres of water in the kettle

2 – Pour into a large saucepan and add the chicken stock

3 – Bring back to the boil and add the 3 nests of noodles

4 – Simmer with lid on for 4 minutes

5 – Strain into a colander and flush briefly under cold water

6 – Set aside in a cool place

Method for the stir-fry and sauce

7  – In mug #1 mix 1 tsp of soya sauce with 1 tsp of cornflour. Blend to a paste and add 1tsp of sugar. Mix well. Add the beef and mix well.

8 –  In mug #2 mix 2 tsp of water with 2 tsp of cornflour

9 – Heat your wok or frying pan for 5 minutes at medium-low heat (our ring goes from 1 to 9 and D set it at 4 for the entire meal)

10 – Add the garlic and cook until it begins to turn brown – stirring constantly for approx 30 seconds or so

11 – Add the beef + ground black pepper and stir constantly for 1 minute (until it is partially cooked)

12 – Remove the beef and garlic to a cool place

13 – Add the chicken stock (or water), and oyster sauce + 1 tsp of sugar to the pan and deglaze it (scrape any stuck-on stuff from the base of the wok or pan with a wooden spoon). Bring it to the boil.

14 – Add the broccoli florets (cook for 7 minutes total if you have no other veg, or 8 minutes if you have Pak Choi and mushrooms)

15 – If you have Pak Choi, chop off the white end bits and add them to the broccoli 2 minutes after you started to cook the broccoli.

16 – If you have Pak Choi, add the green leaves after another 2 minutes after adding the Pak Choi white bits. Also add the Oyster Mushrooms if you have them.

17 – 6 minutes after adding the broccoli, STIR mug #2 (flour may have settled) and add it. Also add the beef and sesame oil and toss in the noodles.

18 – Stir everything constantly for 1 additional minute.

Serve reasonably quickly because the veg will lose crispiness after 5 to 10 minutes.