Beef in Oyster Sauce

This is one of those dishes that is so simple and so often screwed up at home.  Beef in Oyster Sauce.  Mr. Choppy used to turn his into shoe leather and screw it all up to hell.  Originally I made it according to the recipe in the cook book that came with my wok.  I have no idea the name or the author as I lost it many moves ago, and it did have some good things in it, but not beef in oyster sauce.

The key was working from Ken Hom's New Chinese Cookery.  The trick is so simple and this dish is a piece of cake once you know it.  What is great with this dish is, depending on your knife skills, you can turn a relatively small portion of meat into enough for two.  You just need to slice the steak up into thin bite size portions, serve with rice and a veg you got a pretty decent meal without having huge portions. This dish is a great thing to make along with the baby bok coy I did earlier or other greens.  But before you get started you need a few things.... (cont)


Typically I get a New York strip steak for this dish.   About 0.7 to 0.8 lbs for two people, scale up from there for more.  The idea is to keep the portion to about 8 oz or less per person.  The other things you will need is Shaoxing rice wine, corn starch, Oyster Sauce, green onion and some oil.  That is all that goes into this! 

I'll work up some pictures on how I slice the meat up, but for now just imagine taking your cleaver (don't even come here with a chef's knife!) and slice the steak into strips, about 1/4" inch or less thick.  Then dived each strip into 3 or three pieces.  Cut off any large chucks of fat or connective tissue.  

Place the pieces in a bowl and add about 1/4 cup of the rice wine.  Mix, add about 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of corn starch and mix.  You want this to set about 20 minutes or so.  This is usually enough time to get your rice going or other parts of the meal.  You know your own skills at getting things out together so you can figure the timing out that works best.  

  

You want to get your wok heated up.  Once it is hot, put in a bit of oil. I never measure this part, I just put some in the walk so it looks good.  More of my qualitative cooking issues.  If i had to guess, about 2-3 table spoons but use your judgment and try it a few different ways.  You need enough to cook the meat but not so much that you are deep frying!  Swirl and let it heat and then add the meat.

Depending on your stove this will take just a few minutes, you want to avoid overcooking the meat or you will end up with shoe leather.  

You are getting close here, just as the last bit of pink disappears, remove the meat from the wok, and drain off the oil with a spider strainer.  Give the walk a quick clean under running water and put it back on the heat drying the water.

Ok, here is the trick I learned from Ken Hom's book.  You heat the wok back up and then pour in a good helping of oyster sauce.  No oil, nothing else, just the oyster sauce.  Let it start to caramelize and bubble around the edge.  then add back the meat.  Turn off the heat and just work it all together to combine.  

That is it.  Just put in your serving dish with some chopped green onions or spring onions if you can get them and serve.  Cooking the oyster sauce just that little bit adds a nice flavor and makes it a little different than just dumping the old sauce on the meat.  Also, don't over cook the meat at the first part!

Doesn't this look good?  I hope so because it tastes damn amazing.  A bit of the baby bok choy and you are all set.