Beef and broccoli! In Guangdong a bit more classic of a combination might be Beef with Gailan, but especially these days beef with broccoli is as classic of a homecooking combination as any.
A fair warning that this ‘6th anniversary’ video can get a little… sassy at parts. Please do not take anything in this video as a critique of any individual creator.
0:00 – The purpose of this video
0:56 – On handling broccoli
1:45 – On handling beef
5:08 – The whys and hows of restaurant stir-frying
8:15 – Adjusting to a home-kitchen
12:06 – Is this Better Than Takeout? A rant
BEEF MARINADE
* Beef – loin, flank, round (牛外肌肉), 175g
* Salt, ¼ tsp
* Sugar, ½ tsp
* Cornstarch (生粉), ½ tsp
* Black pepper powder (黑胡椒粉), ¼ tsp
* Baking soda (苏打粉), ¼ tsp
* Soy sauce (生抽), ½ tsp
* Dark soy sauce (老抽), ½ tsp
* Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ½ tsp
* Oyster sauce (耗油), ½ tsp
* Water, 3 tbsp
* Oil, ½ tbsp
(you can optionally swap the baking soda with papain – if so, use 1/8 tsp; you can also add egg white – if so, add a half an egg white)
Thinly slice the beef into 2-3mm sheets. Add all the other ingredients except the oil – mix very well, 1-2 minutes, until the water is absorbed. Add the oil, mix well.
Marinate for at least 2 minutes and up to 60 minutes.
PORK MARINADE
* Lean pork (瘦肉) – e.g. loin, 175g
* Salt, ¼ tsp
* Sugar, ½ tsp
* Cornstarch (生粉), ½ tsp
* White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), ¼ tsp
* Soy sauce (生抽), ½ tsp
* Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), ½ tsp
* Oil, ½ tbsp
Thinly slice the pork into 2-3mm pieces. Add all the ingredients except the oil, mix well. Add the oil, mix well.
SAUCY STIR FRY
* Broccoli, one small head, ~250g post trimming
* Marinated Beef or Pork from above
* Oil for pre-frying:
If passing through oil in a skillet, ~0.75 cups, or enough to fill a skillet to 0.5cm-1cm depth
If ‘pre stir-frying’, 3-4 tbsp
If passing though oil in a wok, ~2 cups, or enough to submerge a skimmer or a spider
* Oil for cooking: 3-4 tbsp
* Garlic, 3 cloves, minced
* Ginger, ~1cm, minced
* Liaojiu, a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 1 tbsp
* Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tsp
* If you want a saucy stir fry, prepare:
Water, 5 tbsp
Oyster sauce (蚝油), 1 tbsp
Cornstarch (生粉), 1 tbsp
Sugar, 1 tsp
Salt, 1/8 tsp
MSG (味精), ¼ tsp
* If you want a not saucy stir fry, prepare:
Water, 1 tbsp
Oyster sauce, 1 tsp
Cornstarch, ½ tsp
Sugar, ½ tsp
Salt, 1/8 tsp
MSG, ¼ tsp
* Oil, for sheen, ~1/2 tbsp of the cooking oil
Cut the broccoli into small florets. Blanch for 90 seconds, then strain and rinse with cool water to stop the cooking process.
If passing through oil in a skillet, heat the oil up to 190C, then add in the broccoli. Cook for 45 seconds, flipping a pieces here or there to help cook evenly. Strain, reserving the oil for stir frying.
If doing a simple pre-stir fry, fry the beef (or pork) over a high flame for about 90 seconds, or until it looks obviously cooked.
If passing through oil in a wok, heat the oil up to 165C, then add in the beef. Cook for 30-45 seconds, strain.
If stir-frying in a wok, first longyau: get your wok piping hot, shut off the heat, add in your oil (3-4 tbsp) and give it a swirl to get a non-stick surface. Swap the flame to medium-low and immediately add in the garlic and ginger, fry until fragrant (~30 seconds). Swirl in the wine and give a quick mix.
If stir-frying in a skillet, add in the oil and swap the flame to medium-low. Immediately add in the garlic and the ginger, fry until fragrant (~60 seconds). Swap the flame to high. Scooch the aromatics and the oil to one side of the pan. Add the wine to the other side of the pan and cover. Cook for ~10 seconds covered, jiggling the skillet, then uncover.
Either way, add in the beef and give a brief fry, ~15 seconds. Then swirl in the soy sauce, and after a brief mix add in the broccoli. Swap the flame to medium-low add in the sauce. Once thickened, ~15-30 seconds, heat off and add the oil.
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http://www.patreon.com/ChineseCookingDemystified
Outro Music: คิดถึงคุณจัง by ธานินทร์ อินทรเทพ
Found via My Analog Journal (great channel): https://youtu.be/GHaL5H-VYRg?t=912
24 Comments
Hey guys, I know that this video got a little… sassy… in parts. Wasn’t our intention, but it is what it is. Please don’t interpret this video as directed at any individual creators or anything:
1. The quick cuts of everyone saying ‘better than takeout’ were only to illustrate the ubiquity of the term. I also included the La Choy dragon in there to show it’s got a really deep history – I even remember seeing old recipes from the 70s and 80s also claiming stuff as ‘better than takeout’ (couldn’t seem to be able to dig them up from a quick google though). Again, all we want to do is get people to think twice before using the quip. I’m also aware that some creators’ livelihoods depend on owning that term for SEO purposes – I wouldn’t expect (or even want) them to make some kind of change just because we’re a little miffed.
2. “Better than takeout” also certainly isn’t solely a Chinese phenomenon. Other Asian cuisines – and Mexican! – also seem quite popular to categorize under the label. And yes, you can definitely also find ‘better than takeout pizza’ and ‘better than takeout burgers’, but the quantity definitely seems to pale in comparison.
3. Anyway, I know this is definitely another video that could be put in the bucket of “Chris and Steph tilt at the people-obsessing-about-restaurant-stove windmill” (maybe one day we’ll make a playlist, lol). I’m definitely aware that our position runs contradictory to a lot of people in the space.
4. In my personal view, the biggest advantage that that people don’t talk about re those restaurant stoves is *speed*. Like, take a look at the video of that dude whipping up some stir-fried Horfun: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1EV4y137ad/ He’s able to pump that thing out in basically two minutes flat. If it was us, working on a home stove, that whole thing might take… 6 minutes? 8 minutes? Now imagine a dinner rush… the chef that knows how to work that burner would be able to get three to four times the sales! It’d be stupid not to opt for it, provided you had the ability.
5. Are there some advantages, flavor wise, that those stoves provide? I’d grant that they do seem to provide *something*, but if we control for everything else (restaurant techniques like guoyou, restaurant approaches to seasoning, the skill of the chef, the fact that a restaurant stir-fry is served hot from the wok instead of needing to wait at the table) we believe that that something is… subtle. Much of what the flavors that people attribute to ‘wok hei’, we believe, is actually just the flavor of chefs being good at their jobs.
6. Generally speaking though, if you look online in English, people talking about wok hei will begin to extol the ‘char’ that the stoves provide. But next time you’re getting Cantonese food at a restaurant, I want you to ask yourself – how “charred” is the food that you’re eating, really? In Cantonese, ‘breath of the wok’ and ‘char’ are two separate concepts – the former, “wok hei” (镬气); the latter, “nong” (燶). In the Cantonese cooking system, wok hei is something that’s valued; nong is something to be avoided. American barbecue would be an example of something that would be very ‘nong’, which is likely why American-style BBQ joints seem to struggle in Guangdong. Those ‘nong’ bits are, in a TCM context, super ‘shanghuo’ (i.e. 上火, “warming” in a bad way) – like, Steph’s mom will obsessively snip off any charred bits from her food. Hell, some of Steph’s friends even avoid the crispy rice at the bottom of claypot rice for the same reason…
7. In sum, char is a quality that American cuisine values, not Cantonese. THAT SAID, if you personally enjoy your stir fries charred? Do it! Char your beef! Adjust to your tastes! International adaptation is fun. We just think there’s a certain level of oddness using a Cantonese term to justify something that is a very non-Cantonese end result.
8. The elephant in the room, however, is that online some of the proponents of actively charring stir fried ingredients are actually Americans with Cantonese ancestral backgrounds. So I do think we have to be open to the idea that wok hei might actually mean something different to Cantonese-Americans than it does to Cantonese in Guangdong. But like, maybe that’s to be expected? I mean, Chinese communities in America’ve been around just as long or longer than Italian communities, right? It makes sense that many people’s tastes would be more ‘American’ in nature, because I mean, they’re… Americans. So while something like Tim Chin’s ‘Torch Hei’ might cause Steph’s mom to recoil in horror, it’s probably correct for him in his kitchen according to his tastes.
9. In a similar sense, there’s another sort of category of video out there that earnestly tries to make a ‘superior’ homestyle version of [insert takeout dish here] – usually using some sort of variation of one of Kenji’s classic SE recipes. But if I remember correctly, in those articles Kenji’s very upfront that he’s uses a sort of ‘Korean Fried Chicken’ approach in order to add crunch. And if you like that sort of crunch like Kenji does, that’s cool! Cook it! Enjoy it! Kenji’s one of the best recipe writers of our time for a reason. But then, it’s not fair to compare the ‘crunch’ of your homemade version vs takeout, because the takeout version isn’t going for ‘crunch’.
10. A few years back Priya Krishna coined the term “Crispy Gone Soggy”, and went on an offensive of sorts to try to convince people that many of the best deep fried dishes aren’t necessarily ‘crispy’ anymore. For example, everyone loves Chicken Parm, but the deep fried coating there’s less for crunch, and more for absorbing the flavors of the sauce. It’s something that I deeply deeply agree with, BUT I think a Chinese culinary term – ‘pao’ (泡), i.e. ‘puffy with sauce’ – could also be used to describe the phenomenon (and might be a little more appetizing-sounding in English haha).
11. Because quite often (but certainly not always!), the point of certain coatings in saucy stir fries is in order to *absorb the sauce*. Because if you want something crunch + saucy, a question that’s worth asking, I think, is… why not just dip? Like, for me personally, if I’m getting something quite crunchy like Korean Fried Chicken, I personally actually prefer the plain sort and to dip in the sauce. The chicken stays crunchier, I can control the sauce quantity, and it’s less messy to eat.
12. But if YOU like your stuff crunchy, that’s cool! You’re allowed to adjust to your tastes, whether cultural or otherwise – that’s part of the fun! I just think it’s a little silly to then claim that these adjustments then are somehow intrinsically superior. Like, there’s this book on Cantonese cuisine (that we otherwise really enjoy), that in one part discusses the history of Cantonese chefs going abroad and spreading the cuisine. In the 1970s, they mention, that Cantonese chefs went to Singapore and Thailand and – his words – “significantly elevated the local cuisine”. Recently, living here in Bangkok, we’ve been enjoying whipping up a bit of Thai food, but sometimes I find that I can’t help but cut back a bit on the sugar, marinate my meat, etc etc. Sometimes I’ll joke around with Steph “here, try some of my Pad Krapow, but SIGNIFICANTLY ELEVATED”. The joke is that I’m not actually elevating anything, I’m just tweaking Thai cuisine based off of my own tastes and a few techniques employed by the cooking system I’m most familiar with (probably Cantonese, by this point). Want to do the same thing with Cantonese food and American techniques/tastes? Awesome! Even on this channel I’ll find myself doing so for a bit of Cha Chaan Teng fare. Just know that you are adjusting, and (given the popularity of Chinese food worldwide), your adjustment probably won’t be intrinsically ‘better’, though they’ll probably be better for your own tastes.
13. Quick aside that for the ‘not saucy’ seasoning at 8:02, the correct water quantity is the second (yellow, highlighted) one – i.e. 1 tbsp. Sorry about that – forgot to correct the first textbox. And of course, the recipe in the description box is the correct 🙂
Oof. Apologies for the novella there. We’ve obviously got… a lot of stuff to say lol. Again, HUGE thank you to everyone that’s watched over these six years; and an especially huge thank you to everyone that’s supported us on Patreon. Being able to have ‘freedom from the algorithm’ has been huge in being able to create the sort of content that we’re passionate about 🙂
12:22 jim henson
also, unless you live in a decent size asian populated city, or the coast, chances are the chinese takeout sucks, so i dont blame ppl for disparaging remarks about chinese restaurants in those areas. it might be very possible to do better than the local chinese greasy spoon in your own kitchen.
Tbh I have no improvements over my favorite takeout place’s beef with broccoli. I just add pepper flakes (I like it very spicy.) and that is a rice thief. It’s perfectly tender, and the sauce is fantastic. Why spend double the amount of money making it at home when I can have it in 5 minutes and support the business of the owner, who I have known for 20 years?
I know what I’m ordering for lunch now. 🥩🥦🍚
pasta better than takeout.
dont forget. myth about MSG being bad for your health were spread because of a racist letter originating in 1968 which was soon later found out to be a hoax.
There used to be a bunch of Chinese Restaurants in SF that had one of my fave Chinese dishes, which was likely just a bastardized version of an actual Hunan dish. They all called it "Bell Pepper Beef or something similar." it was Beef and Bell Pepper (obviously) and Onions. So good. Probably a VERY simple Soy and Oyster Sauce, maybe?
Who's the turd-blogger who is hating-on Asian Food?
You bet your ass I just called Good Friend for some Beef and Broccoli.
you moved over the marinade too quick. had to rewind and pause to see. Don't be afraid to let your viewers see all the ingredients. Slow down when showing a long list of ingredients. Emphasize the importance of a long list and why its important to add all of it for flavor and appearance. Don't skimp. some will naturally adapt others will come back and learn. Above thanks for the beautiful lesson.
Gailan is easily available here in Montréal so that's my go to – no need to blanch or pre-cook, it always ends up perfect and crunchy! It's like it was meant for stir-frying!
An excellent and comprehensive video! If only I could forget that uncalled for reference to surf and turf… 😉 Which I find one of the most obscene and crude ideas ever produced in gastronomy that has NOTHING to do with culinary tradition (and more to do with showing off your wealth).
EDIT: very on point also regarding the "better than takeout" rubbish spreading like wildfire across all social media platforms.
I do enjoy making beef and broccoli and have learned some tips here. Thanks. Honestly, I never thought of the implications to "better than takeout". Never use the phrase. But your point is valid. No one ever says "better than takeout pizza".
I’ve been learning how to make Chinese takeout recipes because it’s good not because
“I can do it healthier (better)”.
I’m American from the southern US and we have are own cooking traditions and techniques.
It irritates me when someone denigrates southern cuisine by wanting to make it healthier as if southern recipes are inherently unhealthful.
I’m happy to learn the history, techniques, and intricacies of dishes that have a favor palette that I can’t master without a good teacher.
Well, I’m from upstate New York and I have to disagree with her when I was growing up you could get wonderful service and food from Chinese restaurants but lately, especially in African-American neighborhood they treat us like dirt and the food is no better. I can definitely make anything better than what they’ll serve you at my local Chinese spot do I appreciate this sophisticated talents of Chinese cuisine yes I do but if you want real Chinese cuisine, you have to go to Queens New York or you have to go to Quebec in Canada. That’s literally how far you have to go to get something truly decent the Chinese people in America has just given up on giving us anything that’s innovative and truly tasty like it was in the 80s and 90s, that’s just my opinion
I've been watching your vids for a while and that last little monologue you had was what got me to subscribe. people, especially amateur home cooks like myself, greatly underestimate the hundreds of little steps you need to get right in order to cook something truly delicious. Cantonese cooking is deceptively technical! I think because it's so easy to buy sauces these days and because, like you said, Chinese takeout is so quick and cheap, that people take it for granted. great job highlighting this. it makes me appreciate all foods even more and I have a new appreciation for the thousands of years of collective cooking knowledge went into making a "simple" stirfry.
Better than take out is a compliment in my eyes. That the take out Is bomb and if we're able to make something better it's paying homage in my opinion. Not belittling or condescending…
Alot of Asian restaurants have Mexicans in the kitchen these days and the food is sub par and expensive. Cooking anything yourself is better in many aspects but that doesn't mean you might get that one delicious plate at a restaurant or take out on occasion also
This is why I love you guys, spitting truth while staying respectful to the masters. This is a really respectful, insightful video, much appreciated.
Thank you for pointing out the better than take out thing. As a white guy who absolutely loves all Asian food, even I failed to notice the implication of people saying theirs is better than take out. You made an excellent point that nobody claims a pasta you can make at home is better than a restaurant. It's especially annoying when people say theirs is better than take out because theirs doesn't have msg. It's unfortunate we still live in a world where msg is seen as a bad thing that's only linked to Chinese food.
"better than take out" for me means less Americanization for bland palates and more authentic Chinese flavors
1:28 OOF, roasted broccoli is so good, definitely think you could do some shit with that
2:12 its these freeze frames where we learn the most
13:20 i have never wanted anything more than to have an audience with my local chinese food takeout restaurant showing me exactly how they make the food that I cannot make
I agree with the premise of your rant. What I will say is that my grandmother makes better pasta than maybe 90% of Italian restaurants I've been to.