Chinese beef & broccoli, but with steak tips and sprouts

This video is an ad for ButcherBox. New users sign up now with my link in the description and choose between chicken thighs, ground beef, or premium steak tips to receive free in every box for a year. And speaking of steak tips, I used some to make a little twist on the Chinese-American restaurant classic beef and broccoli. Normally it's done with thin slices of beef — these are bigger chunks — and you could do it the exact same way with broccoli, but beef and brussels sounds good to me both phonetically and culinarily, so here we go. What are steak tips, by the way? Well, here's my ButcherBox box that I got the other day, and steak tips can be lots of things, but when you buy them from a reliable supplier — and ButcherBox deals in 100% grass-fed beef with total supplier transparency — when you get good steak tips, what they're gonna be is trimmings from tender cuts. Little odd bits that they trim away when butchering premium steak cuts, as opposed to the tough little scraps that they'd put in their stew meat. These, in contrast, are tender, but still cheap because they're scraps. I quick-thawed these in cool water and I'm washing them — not for sanitary reasons, but because it seems to kind of open up the muscle tissue and make it more receptive to the velveting step that we do next. For about a pound of meat, I've got a quarter teaspoon of baking soda — the Chinese restaurant secret for tenderizing meat, like half a teaspoon of cornstarch. That gives you a velvety texture on the surface, hence velveting. A splash of soy sauce and maybe a little sugar. Really mix this up good, and velveting works in as little as half an hour, but because these are thicker pieces of beef than you normally use, I'm gonna give them overnight in the fridge. I've been doing a lot of what I'll call overnight-weeknight meat meals lately. Like, here's another one. ButcherBox sends me pork raised crate-free, so I'm gonna take these ribs, season them, wrap them in foil, and stick them in a very low oven overnight, like 200 F, 95 C. Dinner time the next day, I just parboiled a bunch of mini potatoes until soft. Open up the ribs and they are fall-apart soft and they've rendered a ton of delicious fat, into which I will toss my potatoes with some seasoning and I'll grab a glass and gently smash each potato to let it crisp. Back in the oven at a much higher temperature to brown everything. Maybe improvise a ketchup-based barbecue sauce. Slather the ribs for their last couple minutes and toss the potatoes. So easy and so good. An overnight-weeknight meal, if you eat pork. If you don't eat pork, that's just fine. I get curated boxes from ButcherBox where they surprise me with random stuff, but if there's something that you don't want, you just tell them. And of course, you can assemble custom boxes entirely yourself. Free-range organic chicken, wild-caught seafood, humanely-raised stuff with no antibiotics or added hormones. Check it out with my link in the description and get free chicken thighs, ground beef, or steak tips for a year. With my steak tips, I'm having Brussels sprouts. Trim off the stem end, cut in half, and then discard any tattered leaves that fall off. You can steam these and other undelicate vegetables without a steamer basket. Just throw them in a hot pan with a film of water and cover tightly. 10 minutes later, they're fork tender. Same exact procedure would work with broccoli florets. Shock them in cool water to stop the cooking and protect that bright green color. A little oil in a pan, marinated ButcherBox steak tips go in, and I will simply stir-fry these on max heat, which is pathetic heat compared to like a Chinese wok over a jet engine burner, but because these are thicker than normal beef pieces, that's OK. I've got time to brown these before they overcook inside. The pieces are pushing juice up to the surface, and that means they're about done inside. In go my Brussels sprouts, just to reheat. Frozen minced garlic and ginger cubes — my new weeknight hero. A little sweetener, and my cooking sweetener of choice is usually molasses. A little more soy sauce, maybe, and if it looks like I need more moisture, I've got my sprout water right there. If it looks loose, I'll mix up a cornstarch slurry with some soy sauce, stir that in and let it bubble to thicken and we're about there. Taste and adjust seasoning. I just want a little splash of rice vinegar and I'm good. Some sesame seeds on top, only because I already have them in the pantry, and that recipe is so much better than I was expecting it to be. Like, I told ButcherBox that I was gonna do a whole week of short recipes for this ad, and this one came out so good that I was like, guys, this is it. Make some Chinese food with the free steak tips new members can get for a year when they sign up now with my link in the description. Or free chicken thighs or ground beef in your boxes of delicious, humanely raised meat from ButcherBox, a certified public benefit corporation that meets the highest standards of social and environmental impact. Thanks again to ButcherBox for sponsoring this video and thereby supporting all the content you enjoy on the Ragusea channel. Tell them Ragusea sent you and get them tips!