Healthy, nutritious, and tasty Beef and Broccoli stir fry is everyone’s favorite. In this article, you will get to know how to make Beef and Broccoli with the traditional sauce. Moreover, we will tell you how to make it with our secret ingredient, Dingolay Gourmet Hot Sauce, to jazz up the regular tasting Beef and Broccoli recipe.
Table of Contents
History of Beef and Broccoli Recipe
Beef and Broccoli is one of the most famous Chinese cuisines. Its popularity traveled to the United States somewhere around the 1920s, when the Chinese migrated to the US and introduced the dish there. The dish is popular as Gai Lan Chao Niu Rou, which means Broccoli Fried Beef, in China. Gai Lin is a common Chinese vegetable that resembles and tastes like Broccoli to some extent. The recipe evolved into Beef and Broccoli when the Chinese could not find Gai Lin in the US and used Broccoli as a substitute. Today, this healthy, nutritious packed beef recipe graces every menu in the US.
Due to the popularity of this dish, Broccoli’s nutritious values were discovered, and it became a popular vegetable throughout the United States. Over the years, this recipe has been improvised, and now you can find it cooked with chicken and pork for a different flavor, but the taste that beef and broccoli has to offer cannot be achieved with any other meat.
Easy Beef and Broccoli Recipe
Our Beef and Broccoli recipe is foolproof and one of the easiest stir fry dishes. It only takes thirty minutes to cook and is perfect for a fancy dinner.
Ingredients:
To make Beef and Broccoli, you will need:
- Beef Strips: Flank Steak (2 pieces, thinly cut into bite-size pieces)
- Broccoli: ½ kg or 5 cups of florets
- Mushrooms: 2 cups
- Olive Oil or Sesame Oil: 2 Tbsp
- Sesame Seeds: to sprinkle
Beef and Broccoli Sauce Recipe:
Beef and Broccoli is prepared with a mouthwatering sauce that combines the two. It is one of the most important ingredients in the whole recipe. To make the easy stir fry Beef and Broccoli sauce, you will need:
- Soy Sauce: half cup or 6 Tbsp
- Brown Sugar: 3 Tbsp
- Cornstarch: 1 ½ Tbsp
- Ginger: 1 tsp (grated)
- Garlic: 2 tsp (grated)
- Warm water: ½ cup
- Black Pepper Powder: to taste
- Sesame or Olive Oil: 2 Tbsp
- Onion: 1 large (thinly sliced)
Instructions:
Start making Beef and Broccoli by de-stemming the Broccoli. Put the Broccoli florets in a deep bowl and rinse them thoroughly. Shift the rinsed florets into a strainer for the excess water to drain.
Take two Flank Steaks and cut them into bite-sized pieces. Make sure you cut them evenly, so they do not take time while cooking. Rinse the pieces and spread them out in the strainer so the excess water may drain.
Meanwhile, take a deep bowl and combine all the ingredients for the sauce. Since it is an easy and quick recipe, you need to prepare the sauce beforehand. Take a deep bowl, pour warm water, soy sauce, brown sugar, grated ginger and garlic, black pepper powder and sesame oil. Although Olive Oil has several health benefits, the taste that Sesame Oil adds to this recipe is unmatched. Furthermore, stir the whole mixture well. The lukewarm water shall help the sugar dissolve better.
Pour some olive oil on the medium-low flame in a frying pan and stir fry beef strips. When the beef is halfway done, add the broccoli and partially cover the pan with a lid. While frying beef, you will need to be a little patient because this process is time-consuming. Keep adding sip-by-sip lukewarm water if you want the two ingredients to be super tender. Or only stir fry the two to keep them crispy. Dish out both the ingredients when done.
Give the sauce mixture a good stir, make sure the sugar has dissolved completely. Pour the mixture into the pan and add chopped and sliced onions and mushrooms. Mix cornstarch in two tablespoons of water. As the sauce thickens, onion dissolves and mushrooms begin to tender, add the cornstarch.
Stir fry for a minute, combine the ingredients well and add the stir-fried Beef and Broccoli. Mix them well and taste the sauce. Add the spices, i.e. salt or black pepper powder, if needed. Sprinkle some sesame seeds, cover the pan with a lid and let it simmer for a while.
Serve it with boiled rice or toasted bran bread slices and Dingolay Gourmet Hot Sauce for an ethereal experience.
Furthermore, the key ingredient in this recipe is the sauce and achieving the right amount of consistency or spices comes as a challenge. To make this easy and quick recipe a little quicker, skip the hassle of making the perfect sauce and add these ingredients into Original Dingolay Gourmet Hot Sauce. Add three cups of the sauce to the pan and add the stir-fried Beef, Broccoli and Mushrooms to it and prepare a perfect meal. These sauces are packed with exquisite taste and health and especially saves us from the turmoil of preparing a foolproof Beef and Broccoli sauce.
Side Dishes
Beef and Broccoli are highly nutritious, but what to serve with it? You can increase the nutritious value of Beef and Broccoli if you pair it with a side dish that complements its health benefits. A few of the most popular side dishes are mentioned below.
Plain Boiled Rice
Plain Boiled White Rice is a perfect go-to combination with Beef and Broccoli. The absence of spices in rice neutralizes the spices in Beef and Broccoli and pairs well with the beefy texture.
Ingredients:
- Rice: 1 cup
- Water: to rinse and boil
- Salt: to taste
Instructions:
Rinse the rice in a strainer. Shift them into a deep bowl and let them soak for fifteen to twenty minutes. So the grain may soften a bit before you boil it.
In a deep pan, pour at least 3 to 4 cups of water and bring it to a boil. Add the soaked rice to it, sprinkle some salt and give it a good stir. Do not wait for the rice to boil completely, or they will turn out to be a sticky mess.
Wait for them to be a little over half done, turn off the flame and drain the extra water. Let the boiled rice sit in the strainer for a minute, then put them back in the pan and cover with the lid. The rest of the rice will cook in the steam. This method of steaming the rice separates the grains perfectly, and you get tasty boiled rice. Serve these rice with Beef and Broccoli to increase its health benefits and enhance the taste.
Boiled Pasta
Boiled pasta is another side dish that is loved alongside Beef and Broccoli. Similar to rice, the bland starch of pasta complements the beefy texture of the dish. Here is the simplest way of boiling pasta.
Ingredients:
- Pasta: 1 cup (elbow or spiral)
- Water: to boil and rinse
- Salt: to taste
- Olive Oil: to stir fry
Instructions:
Take a deep pan, pour a generous amount of water. For one cup of pasta, you will need approximately four to five cups of water. Bring the water to a boil. Add pasta to boiling water, sprinkle some salt, and add one tablespoon of olive oil. Adding olive oil to the boiling pasta does not let it stick together. Meanwhile, keep stirring almost every five minutes, but not too fiercely, or it will come out too starchy and broken up.
As it has boiled, pour it out in a strainer and quickly rinse with cold water. In another pan, pour some oil and stir fry the boiled pasta in the absence of spices and vegetables. The spicy Beef and Broccoli will neutralize the bland taste of pasta.
Storage Options
If you have leftover Beef and Broccoli, you can refrigerate or freeze it. We will suggest not to freeze it, or when you heat it, the broccoli will lose its crispiness. If you refrigerate it, then warm it in a microwave so the texture of the dish remains intact.
Customizability
Beef and Broccoli has several health benefits. The protein-packed beef and iron filled broccoli are perfect for you to consume if you are on a diet. Moreover, you can customize the dish in several ways that are tasty as well as healthy for you.
- Keto Beef and Broccoli: follow the recipe given above, only try to replace the flank steak with flat iron steak and minimize the use of oil. Consuming it with cauliflower instead of combining it with boiled rice or pasta. It has several health benefits, is fulfilling, and provides enough calories.
- Bran Bread: you can pair it with toasted bran bread slices. The rich flavor of bran slices adds to the flavor of the crisp broccoli, tender beef and spicy sauce.
Dingolay Gourmet Hot Sauces
Dingolay Gourmet Hot Sauces are widely acclaimed for their versatility, health benefits and the exquisite taste it adds to regular tasting meals. Prepared with hand-picked, delicious scotch bonnet peppers, pickled garlic and carrots, and special Caribbean spices, Dingolay Hot Sauces make the use of other spices redundant in your meal. Their versatility makes room for them to be paired with almost every meal.
They are available in three different flavors. First one, Mango Gourmet Dingolay Hot Sauce, is prepared with the aforementioned ingredients. This sauce brings a fiery yet mouthwatering flavor to your meal. The other two are prepared with ripened Mangoes and Pineapples and are known as Mango or Pineapple Tropical Dingolay Gourmet Hot Sauce. These Dingolay Tropical Sauces add a sweet yet fiery taste to your food.
All three flavors are perfect to pair with Beef and Broccoli. Not only it saves us from the effort of preparing a sauce that is perfect according to our liking, but it tastes amazing and adds another dimension to the regular tasting Beef and Broccoli.