水煮牛

Ingredients:

1 ½ lbs thinly sliced beef

Vegetable of your choice (celery, bean sprouts, bok choy, whatever I used last time all work)

Seasoning:

2-4 tbsp (depending on how spicy you want it) 郫县豆瓣酱 (pi xian dou ban jiang)

Minced garlic (3-4 cloves)

Minced ginger (2 tbsp)

Finely chopped green onions

Finely chopped cilantro

Sichuan peppercorns

1-3 (again depending on the spicy level you wish to attain) sliced 泡椒 （pao jiao） “pickled

red pepper” & 1-3 crumbled dried red peppers

Salt/pepper to taste

Preparations:

Add some oil, starch, salt (just a bit, don’t over-salt it), and pepper to the finely sliced beef and

mix evenly (this makes the beef more tender when you cook it) and set aside. Place the garlic, ginger,

green onions, pickled red peppers, and dry red peppers in a bowl and set aside. Heat some oil and put

in Sichuan peppercorns, keeping the oil at around medium-high heat. Cook until fragrant (just make

sure you don’t burn the peppercorns) and set this “peppercorn oil” aside.

Instructions:

In a large pan (preferably an electric wok if you have one as they are so freaking amazing), heat

up some oil over high heat. Put in the vegetables, stirring often, until cooked (I’d say 5 minutes should

do it for most veggies, bean sprouts may take longer). Place veggies in a single layer on the serving plate.

In the same pan, jiayou and cook the sliced beef over medium-high heat. Once the beef is

browned, take it out immediately to avoid overcooking it. Add some of the peppercorn oil into the pan

and sauté the郫县豆瓣酱 until fragrant. Add the bowl of garlic, onions,

peppers…and all that jazz, and sauté for 2-3 minutes. Add 2 cups of water

(I’m guessing here…I kinda just pour until I feel it’s enough for the

sauce) to the pan and bring to a boil. Return the cooked beef into the pan

and cook on medium heat for about 2 minutes. At this point, if you have too

much liquid you can thicken the sauce by adding cornstarch mixed with a small

amount of water. Taste it, if it’s too bland add some salt/pepper, but be

warned the bean sauce is salty as hell so you shouldn’t need to add any

more. Transfer the beef and sauce onto the serving plate w/ veggies.

Drizzle with the remaining peppercorn oil and top with cilantro.

Enjoy, fellow wushuren!