Wednesday, March 10, 2010

What’s for Dinner?

I cook a fair bit. Usually nothing too extravagant, but still, I rarely take things out of boxes and pop them in microwaves and call that dinner. Except when popcorn is involved. And even then I often melt some sugar and make caramel popcorn.

Two days ago I went out and bought some steak, I had planned on just frying it up with some steak spice, but when I came home, the kitchen was a mess, and I didn’t feel like cleaning up the mess to cook for myself, only to make more mess. So the steak sat in the fridge for a day. I also got broccoli, for some reason it took that extra day for me to think of the obvious. Beef and Broccoli.

A trip to the fruit & veggie market for ginger and green onions and voila, supper was underway.

Beef & Broccoli-1

Two cloves of garlic, diced. A thumb sized (about a tsp I’d say) piece of ginger, diced. And a bunch of green onions, chopped. If you want more garlic, add more, if you want less ginger, add less. Vice versa works too, basically make it how you want it, just don’t add salt, the soya sauce will take care of the salty taste. Break up the broccoli into small flowerets. Heat up a big pan to medium with some oil. Add your veggies.

Beef & Broccoli-2

While the veggies are cooking, slice up your beef (I used a cheap cut of pan fry beef, no need to break the bank on steak). Put it in a bowl with some soya sauce (4 or 5 tbsp) and pepper, mix it around so that it’s all covered. Once your veggies are cooked but still a little firm, remove them from the pan.

Beef & Broccoli-3

Set them aside, add a bit more oil to the pan, and then the beef. Cook for a few minutes until the beef is browned on the outside, use your judgement. Add the veggies back to the pan, mix the veggies around with the beef and sauce, reduce the heat to low, and cover the pan.

Beef & Broccoli-4

Let the sauce thicken a bit while you cook up some rice. I used plain white rice because that’s all I had, but if you prefer something else, use something else. If you want a thicker sauce, add a bit of corn starch of flour until it’s the consistency you like.

Beef & Broccoli-5

Serve the dish over rice. It was wonderful, really easy to make, and made enough for three meals for me. I’ve made it before, and I’ll make it again.

-Cheers folks!

1 comment:

pigbook1 said...

one thing i do to make the sauce thicken nicely is to toss the steak in flour (no real breading w/ egg or anything) before I toss it in the oil. It helps thicken the sauce, but I also like the texture of it on the beef.