Super Tender Chinese Pepper Beef Stir-fry - Marion's Kitchen

We are going to make a beef stir-fry that is so tender, you won't even believe it. With a beautiful, sticky, glossy pepper sauce. You guys, you need to watch this one. This is one of the questions you guys ask me all the time. How do you keep your beef really soft and tender when you're stir-frying it? I've got the answer just for you. First off, let's talk about the beef. I like to start off with a tender cut of beef, because starting off tender means you're more likely to get a more tender result. I like to stick to ribeye or scotch fillet. Sirloin, strip loin, even rump actually is pretty good as well. They're all the ones you're looking for. I'm using strip loin today. What you want to do is check out the grain of the beef. I'm talking about the way that the muscles in the beef run. In this piece, you can see when I slice through here, that the grain is running this way. We want to cut in the opposite direction. This is what's going to help the beef stay nice and tender. The way you cut it is really important. I'm also cutting it on the diagonal, because I like to get wider pieces of beef out of my steak. I want to keep it really thin. This is about the thickness that you want. Slicing is tip number one. Tip number two are some ingredients that we're going to put in our marinade. First off, quite conventional, we're going to add a little bit of soy sauce. Then some Chinese cooking wine. This is a rice wine. You can find it in Asian grocers and a lot of major supermarkets these days. I just want a dash of that. I love the flavour of this in stir-fries. If you'd like to keep it alcohol-free, just leave it out. Here come the important bits and pieces that are going to make all the difference. Baking soda, I'm going to add that. That is going to help to tenderise the beef. Then cornstarch. Cornstarch is going to put a bit of a protective layer around the beef and give it that velvety, soft texture on the outside. Give that a whisk. The beef goes in. The only way to do this, I think, is with your hands, because you really want to make sure that each little piece of beef has its share of that marinade. Get right in there. Give it a good mix. This doesn't need very long. I'm just going to set it aside while I make my stir-fry sauce and do my veggies. Really simple black pepper sauce. I'm going to start with some oyster sauce. Some light soy sauce. Light soy sauce is just the regular Chinese soy sauce. It's called light soy sauce just to differentiate it from dark soy sauce, which we'll get to in a minute. Soy sauce goes in. This is our dark soy sauce. I mainly use this for colour. I want a little bit of vinegar. Some sugar to cut through the saltiness of the sauce. A decent amount of ground black pepper. Mix that through. For our vegetables, I'm going to keep it really simple. Just go with some capsicum. Just want to cut around this so I'm avoiding the seeds and as much of that white part inside as possible. I also want some spring onion. Just slice those. Now we're ready to stir-fry. A wok, obviously, is what you would traditionally use. I know a lot of you email me or message me to say, I don't have a gas stove. I don't have a seasoned wok. What's the best thing to use? In my opinion, if you've got a flat electric surface, then you really want to be going with a really wide pan. The whole idea is to get as much hot surface area as possible. You don't want the bits and pieces to stew. That's what will happen if your pan isn't big enough. Really big pan. Get it really hot. Add some oil. In we go with our garlic. You'll notice it's quite roughly chopped because I don't want it to burn. Straight away in with our onion as well. Literally, 30 seconds later, I'm pushing the vegetables out to the side. I'm going to add in my beef. You want to put the beef in and try to spread it out as quickly as possible in the pan. This is important because you want to get that beef spread out and searing in the pan rather than being all clumped up and stewing and steaming. Don't fiddle with it too much. I just want to let that beef caramelise and get a really beautiful, lovely colour on it. Time to toss everything together. Look at the colour we're starting to get on that beef. Perfect. Just before that beef is cooked, now I'm going to add in my capsicum. That'll give it a chance to soften up a little bit before the beef is cooked through. The beef is just about cooked. The capsicum's got a little bit of colour on it. Now I'm going to add my sauce. This literally just needs to be tossed together until everything is well coated. Now I'm going to add in my spring onion. Look at that beef. It's so glossy. Now all that's left to do is serve it up. Let's see how we've gone with our beef. So soft and tender. You guys will not believe it. Just 2 little ingredients makes all the difference to that beef. Amazing. You'll never have dry beef stir-fry at home ever again. You're welcome. If you've got any comments or questions, pop them below. If you enjoyed the video, why not hit that subscribe button plus the little bell one. That way you'll get notified every time I release a new video. Thanks guys.