That Beef & Vegetable Dish at Chinese Restaurants

In Chinese restaurants, they always have beef & broccoli, beef & onions, or pepper beef, or something... but it's basically the same beef dish.

I decided to make my own version today for dinner.

I got some chuck beef, nice and marbly, and seared them for 2 minutes on each side in oil and garlic. I threw in some anise as well. I seasoned each side of the steak with ground Sichuan peppercorns and salt. While that was going, I was cutting onions.

Here are the onions cooking in the steak fat.

Instead of using green peppers, I used anaheim peppers to give it a little kick. I've been using this floss thing (that I don't use as floss) to deseed my peppers without having to grab at the rind with my fingers. I tend to get the pepper oil into my skin and it burns like heck. This is way easier, and it even comes with clean refills!

I also sliced the steak into more reasonable pieces and trashed any big pieces of fat. I threw all of the ingredients into the pot along with some mirin, soy sauce, corn starch, and a little more salt.

Once the liquid simmered down a little bit, the corn starch turned stewy. All the flavors have mixed together, so I threw in a little sugar and mixed it in. Who needs MSG when you have sugar?!

A minute or 2 later, it's ready to eat!! All of the ingredients together cost about $7.50, and this was a bigger portion than anything you'd get in a restaurant. The meat was super tender, and the sauce was sweet and spicy.