Spicy Beef With Black Bean Sauce

I love going to a Chinese Sichuan restaurant because their food are quite tasty. I myst say that I like almost everything they have to offer in their menu. However, I also have some favorite dishes that I always order. One of them is the spicy boiled beef (Shuizhu Niorou).

Anyways, I didn’t actually make Shuizhu Niorou today. But I was inspired by it. I ended up making this spicy beef with black bean sauce that is not too oily as the original Shuizhu Niorou.

I also used steak cut of beef that were tender. Therefore, I didn’t have to marinade the beef to make it tender like in a Chinese restaurant. And I also wanted it to still have a nice beef taste, that isn’t overpowered by the marinate.

Ingredients: (2 servings)

Savoy cabbage in oyster sauce:

~ 400 g. Savoy cabbage / Chinese cabbage / Napa cabbage, cut small

~ 2 cloves garlic, minced 

~ 2 tbsp oyster sauce

~ 1 tbsp soya sauce 

~ 1 tbsp cooking oil 

Spicy beef in black bean sauce:

~ 500 g. beef, steak cuts, sliced

~ 4 cloves garlic, minced

~ 1 thump ginger, minced 

~ 4 dried chili, diced 

~ 1 scallion, diced 

~ 3 tbsp cooking oil

Spicy beef’s seasonings: (mix every in a bowl)

~ 1 tbsp black bean paste

~ 1 tbsp dark soya sauce

~ 1 tbsp light soya sauce 

~ 1 tbsp Chinese cooing wine (additional)

~ 1 tbsp sugar

~ 1 tsp sesame oil

~ 1/2 cup broth

How to:

First - stir frying the cabbage:

✔️Heat up the pan, add cooking oil and garlic. Saute garlic until golden brown. Add cabbage and the seasonings to the pan. Sauté the cabbage in high heat for about 5 mins. Turn off the heat and put it aside on the serving plate.

Making the spicy beef in black bean sauce:

✔️ Heat up the pan, add 2 tbsp cooking oil. In medium heat, first quickly sauté dried chili and put it aside on a plate. Then sauté the ginger and garlic until golden brown and put it aside with the fried chili.

✔️ In the same pan, add the rest of cooking oil, turn the heat up to high and add the beef to the pan. Sear the beef until brown (or until the juice from the beef is reduced), then add all the seasonings.

✔️ Quickly stir until the beef is evenly coated with seasonings. Then add fried chili, garlic and ginger back to the pan. Quickly mix everything together and turn off the heat.

✔️ Serve the spicy beef on top of stir fried cabbage, and garnish with the scallion.