Four on a journey

We have made it to part 3! To be honest I did think it’ll take until the third part before we talk about how to cook Chinese meat dishes. Luckily, we are here to fix that. We’ll be fixing that mistake by going through step-by-step on how to make simple yet tasty meat dishes, Chinese style.

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This is part 3 of a 4-part series. You can find rest of the series here:
– Stress-free Chinese cooking for beginners part 1: the basics
– Stress-free Chinese cooking for beginners part 2: sauces
– Stress-free Chinese cooking for beginners part 4: how to season a wok

Now that I’ve got the advertising out of the way… let’s talk about meat! But as usual, before we talk about meat, we need to talk about what we do to them.

Tenderising meat: Chinese style

Do you have to use an expensive cut in order to have mouth-watering stir-fry? Well you know the answer. It’s a resounding no. I rarely use wagyu beef (yikes at the price! If you do buy it from the Amazon link, thank you very much) – in fact I don’t think I’ve ever bought/ingested any wagyu (not knowingly anyway) in my life.

In Chinese cooking, tenderising is often done via the use of baking soda or baking powder.

We’ll use beef as an example as that’s the photos I’ve conveniently taken for my most audacious Blackberry Ginger Beef recipe from before 😀. As mentioned before, one generally starts with an inexpensive (ie tougher) cut such as rump, silverside or brisket (which is our favourite when it comes to stewing).

Baking soda to the rescue!

Without further ado, here are the steps to tenderise meat using baking soda/powder:

1. Trim your meat. As you can see from the picture above, cheaper cuts potentially include more fat, sinew and skin. You can keep the trimmings in the freezer for a stew another day (I feel another post coming on!)
2. Cut the beef. This can be in the form of strips or thin slices. Speaking from experience, this is probably the most time consuming and frustrating step if you don’t have a sharp knife.
3. Coat the meat with baking soda (this stuff is so useful, I used to keep tons around for cooking/baking and cleaning). Use about 1.5 teaspoon for 500g of meat. And don’t scale the amount used linearly! for 1kg of meat I’d probably only use 2 to 2.5 teaspoons. Too much baking soda will leaves a tingling bitter taste.
4. Confusingly, if you use BAKING POWDER, you’ll need to double the amount used – so 3 teaspoons. Do not use both baking powder and baking soda!
5. Leave for at least 15 minutes before cooking. Don’t be tempted to add salt/oil at this stage! As the salt will draw the liquid out of the meat thus drying it out and the oil will coat the meat and prevent it from absorbing marinates.

This tenderising method works for all meat other than chicken, which doesn’t usually need any.

Putting it together

They say the best way to learn something is by do it. Let’s try some of the simple recipes I’ve put together.

Beef with ginger and spring onion sauce

This is one of my all time favourites. Simple, quick, tasty. This is a recipe for 2.

Ingredients and kitchen tools needed

Ingredient	Amount
Beef – cut of choice	250g
Ginger	3cm stalk, thinly sliced
Spring onions	3 stalks, cut into 5cm lengths
Baking soda	1 teaspoon
Oyster sauce	1 tablespoon
Vegetable oil	2 tablespoons
For the sauce
Corn starch	2 teaspoons
Oyster sauce	2 tablespoons
Water	8 tablespoons
Sugar	1 teaspoon
Light soy sauce	1 tablespoon
Dry sherry/Chinese cooking wine/vodka/white rum/white wine	1/2 tablespoon

Instructions

Variations

Like it spicy? Toss in some fiery chilli just before throwing in the beef. Like it meaty? Add more meat! Be brave and experiment and try it with different types of meat such as lamb. Often I will add some mange tout or sugarsnap peas (in case you haven’t notices, they are one of of my favourite vegetables!) just a minute or two after the beef is added. Add peppers of different colours or even sliced celery – whatever your heart fancies.

Adding some vegetables make it a complete meal – simple, quick, healthy and tasty. As a guide, 500g of meat plus 300g of mange tout/sugarsnap peas with rice is enough for us as a main dish(2 adults, a hungry teen and and a toddler of varying appetite), plus a side vegetable stir-fry dish.

Other recipes

Of course, we have the Blackberry Ginger Beef and Ray’s cheat sesame chicken

End of part 3

This marks the end of part 3. With this you are equipped to go forth and invent your own Chinese dishes! Is there a favourite ingredient you want to see me use? Or perhaps a favourite recipe you think I should try? Leave a comment below and please subscribe!

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