Video Transcript

Hi, I'm Chef Jeff Trombetta from the Hospitality Management Program of the University of New Haven in Connecticut, and today, we're going to show you how to make a meat stir fry, a beef stir fry. We're going to take this flank steak. Flank steak is a very good cut of meat for stir fry. Then, we cut it thin, sixth of an inch slice, one and a half inch long and we're going to marinate it. This is garlic, okay, chopped garlic. This is ginger that I just did on hydro planting. Red pepper, a red Thai type chili. This is cornstarch. If you ever notice when you have stir fries and the meat is kind of soft and, and well textured, that's 'cause they put a little cornstarch in the marinade. A little sesame oil, not too much, this is strong. Now, what else helps coat the spices, a very good quality of brewed soy sauce and not just a salted soy sauce, but actually brewed and fermented so it, it's concentrated. This is a Japanese product, but we're going to going to go over world here. So, this is rice wine, a sweet rice wine. I can throw a little scallion in there. What I want to do is mix this up and you want to let this marinate. That is a nice mix and we'll let that sit half hour or 40 minutes would be ideal for me. Now, when we stir fry, we want to have very hot pan. So, we have a wok pan and you don't need a lot of oil. But I do, this is regular high smoking heat vegetable oil. It means it can take the heat. We start out with the vegetables that take the longest to cook. So, we're going to give it a few onions, celery and carrot. They all take have, about the same cooking time. They're pretty sturdy vegetable. You don't want to cook your carrot, onions, celery all the way because you want to time it so they are completed their cooking process when all the other stuff is added. I'm going to add some broccoli. Let's get our, our meat added to the pan too because now it's about time, because remember, when I said, we want to have the timing so nothing is overcooked and everything's still fresh, brilliant and kind of stands right. I don't want to put this extra, excess marinade in there. Keep it on the heat 'cause it doesn't cook. This should mostly high heat and many times what you say in Chinese cooking is the idea of a wok is to put some stuff up on the side to kind of slow that down and put the, the stuff that needs to be cooked, in this case the meat, right on the direct heat which is at the bottom of the pan. So, now that the juices are coming out of the meat, that's starting to cook, the broccoli is getting a brilliant green. I got to get some mushrooms in here, not too many, here we go. Now, I'm going to give this whole thing a toss, get the, kind of get the mushrooms on the bottom. Leave it down there. Put it back on the heat. Lay your vegetables and everything out flat, so it gets mostly on the cooking surface. Keep the stuff that you think is getting overcook on the sides of the pan. Now, let's get our vegetables that require less cooking in there. So, I've some orange peppers and I have some red peppers and zucchini. Let me add some garlic. Let me add some more ginger. Now, this is, what's in the foundation of the marinade. I'm going to add a little bit more hot Thai red chili. We're going to go ahead with some scallions, but I'm going to save some of them for the end. Put a bit of shredded Chinese cabbage. Give that all a turn, a toss. We do not cook in sesame oil. It's a seasoning oil. It's strong. So, plus with a nice hot pan and nice liquid, you kind of create some steam and de-glaze the pan and help finish the cooking. I'm going to add a little bit of mirin 'cause I like it and it sweetens it up and takes the edge off those hot, any kind of hot chili I have. Let that all kind of marry together. Now, what I'm going to do here is I'm going to tighten it up a little bit just to show you how the process is. This is cornstarch and I dissolve it and believe it or not, your fingers are your best tool 'cause you want to feel out the lumps and you're going to pour it right to a boiling liquid which we have there in the sautee pan. You don't want to create it too thick, but you want to give it what we call a little bit of a li¨¨. A li¨¨ is consistency. Tighten it up, so it helps kind of, that soy sauce and the mirin and everything, it helps de-glaze the vegetables so your flavors cling together. Don't let it settle down to the bottom. And you could see that it tightens it up right away, holds the sauce right onto the vegetables and the meat. It has to come up to a boil to show its true thickening power. I steamed some nice fresh white rice. We're going to put a little rice down. Put a white rice, just like that. Take our stir fry beef, peppers, zucchini, scallions, garlic, ginger, mushrooms. Now, start to top it and see what you need to make it look good. These are some nasturtiums. I'm just going to throw some of these on the plate just for aesthetic purposes. These are edible flowers, pesticide-free, grown in organic garden. That's purple flower, believe it or not, it's a closed up pansy, it's just that I washed it and when I let it sit in cold water, it closed. But, I think it looks kind of cool. Some scallions, just a little bit of the tender leaves of the Chinese cabbage, put that out there. So, now, you have Chinese meat stir fry. I'm Chef Jeff Trombetta, Hospitality Management, University of New Haven in Connecticut. Enjoy!