Stir-Fried Beef With Snap Peas and Oyster Sauce Recipe (2024)

FAQs

How do you stir fry beef without making it tough? ›

Slice Against The Grain

You should slice perpendicular to those lines, so that you are cutting through the fibers. By slicing through the fibers, you are slicing “against the grain,” which results in less work for your teeth and makes the beef taste more tender.

Aromatic ingredients like garlic, ginger, green onions, chilies and spices. These ingredients are typically added to the oil first to infuse it with flavor. You won't need much; a few teaspoons to a tablespoon of total aromatic ingredients per person adds a serious amount of flavor.

Gently salty and briny, with a velvety smooth, thick texture, oyster sauce is in a number of Asian dishes. The condiment brings rich, savory flavor to whatever you pour it over or into – from Chinese broccoli to stir-fry marinades – and it's a mainstay in many Asian and Asian American kitchens.

Although stringless varieties are available, most sugar snap peas need to have the stringy seams removed before eating.

While there are several ways to velvet, a pound of meat needs about two teaspoons of cornstarch and two teaspoons of oil, says Leung. You may also include two to three tablespoons of water. For beef, add a 1/4-teaspoon of baking soda for tenderizing. Additional seasonings are optional and vary from recipe to recipe.

This is how to use a cheaper cut of beef/steak, such as rump, for your stir-fry, whilst still ensuring it's soft and tender. After all, no-one wants a chewy stir fry! The method is known as velveting or tenderising. There are a few different ways to velvetise steak – which is a common practice in Chinese restaurants.

Cook It Slowly

This is certainly true when it comes to notoriously tough cuts of meat like beef brisket and pork shoulder. Cooking these cuts of meat slowly, either by braising, stewing or grill roasting, is the best way to get these tasty cuts of meat meltingly tender.

Tenderize: In a bowl, sprinkle a small amount of baking soda over the beef and coat evenly with soy sauce, salt, starch, and oil (and optional ingredients, if using). Marinate: After sitting in the mixture for 15 to 30 minutes in the fridge, your beef is ready for stir-frying!

Whether hosting a holiday cookout, serving up some stir-fry or tackling game meats, baking soda is the go-to meat tenderizer to help make your steak, chicken or turkey silkier, juicier and yummier.

Oyster sauce adds a savory flavor to many meat and vegetable dishes. The sauce is a staple for much Chinese family-style cooking. It is commonly used in noodle stir-fries, such as chow mein. It is also found in popular Chinese-American dishes such as beef with stir-fried vegetables.

Is it a must to cook oyster sauce? ›

Oyster sauce will start to lose its umami flavor if you cook it for too long. Add it right at the end of cooking things like stir fries and soups to get the most flavor out of it. This doesn't apply to things like marinated meats that will be cooked with the sauce already on them.

A little salty, a little sweet, and with lots of umami, it's a major player in the only steak marinade you need! You don't have to use it in an Asian dish. Anywhere that can use an umami boost can benefit from oyster sauce.

Oyster sauce (háo yóu, 蚝油) or “ho yeow” in Cantonese dialect, is a savory sauce that is commonly used in Chinese cooking. Traditionally, it was used mostly in Cantonese cooking and southern Chinese cuisine due to the proximity of the fertile oyster beds off the coast of Hong Kong and Guangdong.