It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve got a beef recipe for all of you today.
I like to eat beef but I don’t cook it often (or at all) because I don’t like touching or even looking at raw meat. Plus, I never know how to determine when the beef is done cooking. I don’t want to eat it raw and I don’t want to serve shoe leather either. At the end of the day I simply avoid these struggles and stick to vegetarian meals because there is no guess work there for me. It’s very hard to overcook things that you don’t cook at all.
I guess you can say that I’m in the mood for trying something new because my husband and I ordered one week of meals from Hello Fresh. This made me want to try one of their recipes with my own food while I was waiting for my first delivery and I found this beef and broccoli stir fry in the mix. It looked easy to make so I decided to push myself outside of my comfort zone and try it.
Secretly I was hoping to recruit my husband to be in charge of prepping and cooking the beef while I worked on the broccoli and rice. However, I pushed through and prepped the beef myself, although my husband did supervise at first. Naturally he had to take over entirely on cooking the beef because I got distracted with another task. (I swear that was not intentional so that I could avoid cooking it.)
All told, it was a success. I didn’t die from touching raw meat. Obviously the most important take away here is that the meal was delicious. It was easy to make, but it was tricky to keep on top of all of the various steps that were going on at the same time. The broccoli was in the oven, the rice was in one pot, the beef was in a skillet, and the sauce was in another skillet. It’s definitely doable and I’m pretty good at multi-tasking. (There is no way to properly express the levels of sarcasm needed for that previous statement. Just ask my hubby how utterly single-tasky I am and how I tend to wander around distracting myself from the task at hand by doing other single tasks. 😉 )
Beef and Broccoli Stir Fry Recipe
(2 servings)
Ingredients:
- 1/2 cup rice, uncooked
- 1 and 1/2 cups broccoli florets
- 5 teaspoons oil, divided per the instructions
- 10 ounces beef strips (I used sliced NY Strip Steak.)
- 2 cloves of garlic, minced, divided per the instructions
- 1 lime, zest and lime wedges for juice
- 4 teaspoons soy sauce, divided per the instructions
- 4 teaspoons white sugar, divided per the instructions
- 2 scallions, sliced, divided per the instructions
- 1 and 1/2 tablespoons peanut butter
- 1/4 cup water
- salt and pepper
- (optional) chopped peanuts
Directions:
- Cook the rice according to the instructions on the box and then set it aside.
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F.
- Toss the broccoli florets with 1 teaspoon of oil, a pinch of salt, and a pinch of pepper on a cookie sheet and cook them for about 15 minutes in the preheated oven.
- In a medium bowl, add the beef, half of the minced garlic, lime zest, 1 tablespoon soy sauce, 2 teaspoons of white sugar, 2 teaspoons of oil, pinch of salt, and a pinch of pepper and mix everything together well. Set the beef mixture aside.
- In a large pan, over low heat, heat 1 teaspoon of oil.
- Add the white parts of the sliced scallions, remaining half of minced garlic into the large pan. Stir and cook it for about 1 minute.
- Add the peanut butter, remaining 2 teaspoons of white sugar, and remaining 1 teaspoon of soy sauce into the large pan and mix everything together.
- Slowly pour 1/4 cup of water into the large pan and stir until the sauce is smooth.
- Remove the sauce from the pan, add the lime juice, pinch of salt and pinch of pepper. Set the sauce aside.
- In another large pan (or clean the one you just used to make the sauce), over medium/high heat, heat the remaining 1 teaspoon of oil.
- Add the beef mixture to the pan and cook it until it’s browned, stirring frequently.
- Remove the pan from the heat, and stir in the cooked broccoli and sauce.
- To plate, divide the cooked rice between two plates and then top with the beef and broccoli. Serve with a lime wedge for squeezing the lime juice onto your own serving and garnish with green parts of the sliced scallions.
- (Optional) Sprinkle some chopped peanuts on top.
Source: Hello Fresh
