Beef with Cumin-Best Stir Fry Ever-Pix intensive

jfm0830 · January 22

I have Village Idiot to thank/"blame" for this. I've been doing more stir frys, I just haven't been posting them all here because I felt like I was becoming a one-trick pony. But the other day VI posted wonderful pictures and a link to a great recipe for Shredded Beef with Sweet Peppers, a Sichuan recipe that was NOT intended to be hot & spicy. It was from a Sichuan cookbook by a lady named Fuschia Dunlop. From VI's pix I knew I had to make it. I did a version last night (see below) and it was the best beef stir fry recipe I've made to date. It was not spicy but had great flavors.

Today I was looking into getting a copy of the cookbook myself and I found a bunch of links to Fuschia Dunlop's recipes on line. This one in particular caught my attention. It was called Beef with Cumin and I had all of the ingredients on hand. Better yet, it was a spicy Sichuan recipe. The recipes I've done from my two Grace Young's cookbooks have been excellent, but none of them have been what you would call hot and spicy. This recipe was indeed intended to be spicy. It called for 2 spicy red chili peppers, but was not specific about the type. So I used 3 Thai red chills knowing they would add some extra spice to the proceedings. It called for 2-4 tsp of red pepper flakes and I used the full 4 tsp. It also used a new to me technique of deep frying the beef in the wok. This was actually the first time I've deep fat fried anything.

I'll let the pictures tell the rest of the story, but let me give you the bottom line:

Wow!!!

I-N-C-R-E-D-I-B-L-E!!!!

I think I had a food-gasm!!!!!

The dish was an incredible blast of flavors with cumin (one of my favorite spices) being the primary flavor. It was very very hot. I knew my wife would never be able to eat this and it was almost too spicy for me too. For those who might be interested here is the link: Beef with Cumin. On to the pix:

The ingredients are gathered & prepped. The marinade used dry sherry (or rice wine), light & dark soy sauce, potato flour, water & salt. The other ingredients were flank steak, scallions, ginger, garlic, red pepper flakes, cumin, sesame oil & peanut oil.

The wine, potato flour, water, salt pepper & soy sauces are mixed in with the thin sliced flank steak.

The marinaded meat rests for 30 minutes. While this was going on I went out and fired up the Egg & brought it up to just under 300 degrees for deep fat frying the beef.

The wok is on the Egg and the peanut oil has been heated to 28o degrees. I checked the temp with my infrared thermometer which can shoot the surface temp of the oil.

The beef was added to the hot oil and I was rewarded with that sizzling sound meaning the oil was hot enough.

The beef has been frying for nearly 2 minutes and is almost done.

The beef is draining while I bring the wok up to 550 degrees.

The scallions, red peppers, garlic, ginger & cumin have been added& get stirred to combine.

Everything is mixed together & it is time to add the beef back in.

The beef has been thoroughly mixed with the other ingredients and it i time to plate the beef.

The beef is plated and has been doused with some toasted sesame oil to finish.

This recipe was extremely hot and just exploded with flavors. It was as good as any Sichuan dish I've had in any restaurant.

The Beef with Cumin was served with some veggie fried rice and it was needed in large doses to help deal with the heat from the beef.

If you decide to try this yourself and you don't like real hot you'll need to reduce the amount of red pepper flakes and chili peppers or use a less hot type of chili than the 3 Thai chilies I used. Also be sure to have plenty of rice available to help fight the heat. I like hot & spicy dishes, but this one was almost to hot for me.

Jim

Village Idiot · January 22

Excellent, Jim !!!!

As you cooked the recipe I posted of Fuschia Dunlop's Sichuan Shredded Beef, I will cook this dish. Thanks for the link ! I have to fix some stone crabs tomorrow, but this will be next on the list. I love hot and spicy !!!

caliking · January 22

Way to wok! Fuchsia Dunlop's recipes have proven to be excellent in our experience. We love Sichuan food, and luckily can get many options in Houston. Now to pull out the wok and try some recipes on the egg...

Village Idiot · January 22

@Caliking What part of town are you in? I'm near Meyerland, West U. Have you gone to Ranch 99 on I-10 (great Asian supermarket)?

Chubbs · January 22

Love your posts, Jim. Looks fantastic. =D>

caliking · January 22

@VI: I have! I love that place and Super H-Mart. I don't get to those places often since I live in Pearland and its a bit of a hike. Usually end up at Hong Kong City Market on Bellaire since we go to Chinatown a fair bit.

Village Idiot · January 22

@caliking Yep. Ranch 99 and Hong Kong Market both would be a long hike from Pearland. I used to go to Hong Kong Mkt before Ranch 99 opened, but one time, I got that faint whiff of Asian fishy smell, and that turned me off somewhat. I don't know about Super H-Mart, but I'll check it out.

Edit: Looks like Super H Mart is right down Blalock from Ranch 99. I'll go there on my next visit. Thanks.

fishlessman · January 22

Village Idiot said:

@caliking Yep. Ranch 99 and Hong Kong Market both would be a long hike from Pearland. I used to go to Hong Kong Mkt before Ranch 99 opened, but one time, I got that faint whiff of Asian fishy smell, and that turned me off somewhat. I don't know about Super H-Mart, but I'll check it out.

Edit: Looks like Super H Mart is right down Blalock from Ranch 99. I'll go there on my next visit. Thanks.

i dont think the place near me could be described as "that faint whiff of Asian fishy smell". more like the smell of the chum bucket i hang of the side of the boat gone bad
:))wow is it stinky, they are big on fish and not on cleaning up

fishlessman · January 22

will do the cumin beef this week, have a pile of sliced up beef in the fridge, love the spicey

Village Idiot · January 22

fishlessman said:

i dont think the place near me could be described as "that faint whiff of Asian fishy smell". more like the smell of the chum bucket i hang of the side of the boat gone bad
:))wow is it stinky, they are big on fish and not on cleaning up

:)) @fishlessman Your description is much more accurate than mine. I was trying to be politically correct, which I fail at on every occasion.

Z_Eggineer · January 22

Hmm, going to be in Pearland in a couple weeks, so maybe I will stop by.

It looks great! The only thing I would do is add more peppers! :D

FanOfFanboys · January 22

Looks great. I need a wok ASAP

caliking · January 22

I'm going to have to pull out my Fuchsia Dunlop book and get busy. To the Houstonians and other Texans (possibly others also) H-mart is a chain and a lot of fun to visit. More types of fresh bulk kimchi than you can shake a stick at!

Socalcajudo · January 23

Looks great jfm080. For your wok, are you using a spider set up for a large? And also how big is the wok?

Dyal_SC · January 24

Looks gee double oh oh dee gooood! :D

Aviator · January 24

Have a Q:

If God made fish so edible and good and healthy, why the heck do they "smell" and make your whole dwelling "smell" ?

Why cant it not be like bacon or steak?

jfm0830 · January 24

Thanks to everyone for their comments!

caliking said:

I'm going to have to pull out my Fuchsia Dunlop book and get busy. To the Houstonians and other Texans (possibly others also) H-mart is a chain and a lot of fun to visit. More types of fresh bulk kimchi than you can shake a stick at!

H-mart is a regional chain with locations in 14 states including Burlington Massachusetts around here. They have a great selection of hard-to-find Asian food items. Better yet, unlike many of the Asian markets around here, they are so clean it looks like you could almost eat off the floor. Since H-mart opened, I have found a good local Asian market so I don't get to H-mart as often. I can say when they first opened you wanted to stay away from there on the weekends. They were so crowded, it look like fights over parking spaces were going to break out at any moment. I used to park at a shopping plaza next door and walk over to avoid the chaos in the parking lot.

jfm0830 · January 24

Socalcajudo said:

Looks great jfm080. For your wok, are you using a spider set up for a large? And also how big is the wok?

Thanks @Socalcajudo. Sorry I missed your post. I got a notice of the reply before and after yours, but not your reply.

That is a five-legged Spider for my first large. The new Egg I got at year end has 3 notches in the fire ring, instead of 5. You'll need to look at your fire ring before ordering a Spider.

The wok is a 16" Chinese made, hand-hammered, carbon-steel, D-handled wok from the Wok Shop in San Francisco.

If you or anyone else is interested in more information I wrote some blogs when I was starting out stir-frying on my Egg. Here are the links:

Str-Frying on the BGE (Initial purchases)

First Stir Fry (Seasoning the wok & First Stir-Fry)

Hitting a Comfort Zone (Initial discoveries stir-frying on the Egg)

It's All About the Seasoning (The importance and advantages to seasoning your wok properly)

I am not passing myself off as some sort of wok Eggspert. These are all written from the perspective of a newbie to stir-frying on the Egg. I was sharing what I learned so other folks just starting out could benefit from what I was learning. Village Idiot is the guy that got me pointed in the right direction when I started out here. I owe him a lot of thanks.

Socalcajudo · January 24

Thanks so much for the info.

caliking · January 24

@jfm0830: thanks for your blog links. Just what I needed!

jfm0830 · January 24

My pleasure guys! That's what this place is all about: sharing our collective knowledge so we all benefit. Good luck with your future woking endeavors! Please post pictures and let us know how you're making out when you get going.

Jim

Griffin · January 24

You are killing it with your wok cooks @jfm0830. I'm embarrassed to get my wok out, now. THink I'm gonna do a mini wok cook in the next few days.

jfm0830 · January 24

@Griffin You shouldn't be embarrassed, and you only have yourself to blame. It was a picture post here of one of your great-looking wok cooks that got me going down this path in the first place. Thanks to you I discovered a fun new type of cooking to do on my Egg. So a belated thanks to you for the original inspiration.

Jim

Griffin · January 24

Ah Young Grasshopper...you have surpassed the Master. I have nothing more to teach you now. Not that I was ever a master, just a mere bumbling wokker. Suddenly I'm having a craving for shrimp fried rice. Or beef and brocolli. I need to get that Breath of a Wok book.

jfm0830 · January 24

@Griffin If you like Szechuan style cooking check out the book Land of Plenty by Fuchsia Dunlop. This recipe and the other one I've made from it were outstanding!! Sadly since it's about eight years old now, it is not available in electronic version nor did I have any luck finding it in a brick-and-mortar bookstores. But Amazon still has it and I just ordered a copy.

Chubbs · January 24

jfm0830 said: I think I had a food-gasm!!!!!

I had a food-gasm over Dyals calzones last night....food-gasms are the best...

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