Just like real Szechuan food, the beef and broccoli are cooked in a very rich sauce that contains numerous herbs, peppers, and hot oil to create the most scrumptious flavor. The beef is melt-in-your-mouth tender. The numbing spiciness is so addictively good that you cannot stop eating, even if it makes your stomach burn! Three weeks after moving to Austin. After the overcoming-jet-lag-week, the preparing-to-get-married-week, the recovering-from-the-wedding-week (You know what I mean if you’ve been there!), I finally felt like I was ready for cooking again. I mean, the creative type of cooking, not comfort cooking. Lately I have been cooking a lot of super easy and comforting dishes, such as chow mein and lemon tea. But this week, I’m totally ready to challenge myself with more complicated recipes. Today, I’m bringing you a hardcore Chinese dish – the ultimate beef with broccoli! I’m kidding. Well, not really. You see beef and broccoli in the photo, don’t you? This dish is literally called “water boiled beef” (水煮牛肉, shui zhu niu rou) in Chinese. But if you’ve ever tried it in China, you know it has nothing to do with water or boiling. It is actually a super hot and spicy dish that involves melt-in-your-mouth beef with some veggies in a ton of oil. Just in case if you’ve never tried it, the numbingly spicy silky beef is so addictively delicious that you cannot stop eating, even if it makes your stomach burn. If you order this dish at a real Szechuan restaurant, you’ll get a giant bowl (sometimes as large as a wok) of red oil with countless chili peppers floating on top. You’ll have to fish through the bowl with a strainer to discover the tiny pieces of goodies underneath the oil. And of course you’ll usually end up with one piece of beef, five peppers, and ten peppercorns with one scoop of the strainer. You’ll need to carefully pick out and discard the tiny peppercorns with chopsticks and finally enjoy the hot silky beef with a bite of rice. It’s SO GOOD. It is the fried-bacon-in-bacon-fat kind of good.
This is the type of dish that we order when meeting a good friend for dinner, when we need a break at the end of an exhausting week, for a colleague’s farewell party, to celebrate a small achievement, after returning from a trip overseas, or whenever we’re feeling fancy (yeah, we do eat out a lot!). The second we sit down at the table, we order the dish before the menu is even handed to us (it takes a bit longer to cook). And then we take a look through the menu and order some other dishes. When the giant bowl of oil-submerged goodies arrives at the table, the moment that I smell the nutty, numbing aroma, my mood brightens immediately and my mouth starts watering.
To recreate this famous poached beef at home, I kept the dish as authentic as possible, with some tiny twists – I reduced the chili peppers to 30 and the oil to 1/2 cup. Did I mention this is not the healthiest dish in the world? Well, in fact, it’s not unhealthy at all and it does rate B+ if you check the nutrition facts. Even though you might end up using all your dried chili peppers, the dish may not be up to Chinese standards in terms of hotness. If you can’t eat spicy food, you can cut the peppers in half (cut the amount, don’t cut them literally) or reduce the number of peppers to 10. They are merely to infuse a nice aroma to the dish. As long as you don’t break the chili peppers apart, the spiciness will be tolerable. And yes, you need a lot of oil. This is the best part.
Let me explain how the whole oil thing works. To cook this dish, you need to use tons of herbs and peppers to make a very rich broth, and then poach beef and veggies in it. All the ingredients and the broth will be transferred to a serving dish. Here comes the good part: you need to add a layer of raw garlic and green onion on top, then drizzle plenty of hot oil onto the garlic and onion to release the wonderful aroma. The oil will infuse a great flavor into the whole dish and thicken the sauce. The finished dish will need to be covered with oil. So, when you pick up a piece of beef or broccoli, it will be covered with the thick, numbingly spicy sauce and a thin layer of nutty garlicky oil. It makes things perfect. Again, consider normal french fries (meh…) vs. fries cooked in duck fat (YES!). That is the difference this oil makes. If you follow my recipe and notes closely, you will get a big bowl of authentic Szechuan poached beef, just like one you’d get in China. Here, I do want to add one more note. The recipe may seem long and the steps unfamiliar, but you’ll get the dish on your dinner table effortlessly if you keep your kitchen counter organized (mis en place!). Before turning on the heat, make sure you have these things beside your stove:
Real Szechuan meal
Appetizer: cucumber salad, potato salad, vinaigrette spinach, or a green salad Main course: Szechuan poached beef with steamed white rice Sides: Szechuan stir fried green beans with minced pork, Spicy cauliflower stir-fry, or Stir fried bok choy with crispy tofu Drink: Cold beer Dessert: Fruit plate, Sticky rice cake stuffed with red bean paste, or Ice cream If you’re cooking for two, you can reduce the amount of beef and add more veggies into the broth. You will want to serve it with rice to cut the spiciness. Serving a simple appetizer with the meal or some fruit afterwards will also help balance the spiciness. If you’re cooking for four, add two appetizers and one or two stir fried dishes, depending on the size of the dishes. If you’re cooking for a party or big group (6 to 8), double this recipe, serve two to three appetizers (or a large green salad), one to two stir fried dishes, and a dessert (a large fruit plate is easy to prepare). Happy cooking! 🙂 Like this recipe? Sign up for Omnivore’s Cookbook’s weekly newsletter to get the latest updates delivered to your inbox and a free e-cookbook! And stay connected via Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and Google+. Thanks so much for reading, and happy cooking!
