Sichuan · Main
Shuizhu Niurou
- Advanced
- 40 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, real fire that builds and stays, fading in warm spice.
Ingredients
- 500 g beef topside or flank, sliced 3 mm thick against the grain
- 1 egg white
- 15 g potato starch
- 15 ml Shaoxing wine
- 3 g salt
- 15 ml water, for the velveting
- 60 ml rapeseed oil, plus 120 ml for the final pour
- 45 g Pixian doubanjiang, chopped fine
- 15 g dried erjingtiao chillies, snipped in 2 cm lengths
- 5 g huajiao, whole
- 20 g garlic, minced
- 15 g ginger, minced
- 700 ml unsalted beef or chicken stock
- 300 g celery, cut in 6 cm batons
- 200 g soybean sprouts
- 10 ml light soy sauce
- 2 g ground roasted huajiao, to finish
- 4 cloves garlic, minced, to finish
The skills inside
VelvetingFrying the paste until the oil splitsThe bare simmer: holding liquid below the boilSalted water & the float testBlanching & shockingKnife cuts: dice, julienne, biasResting meat & slicing against the grain
The words inside
Velveting & MarinadesDoubanjiang
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · egg · soy · celery · alcohol
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Rub the beef with salt, wine and the 15 ml water until every drop is drawn in and the slices feel tacky, then work in egg white and starch and leave 15 minutes; they should look glossed, not gluey. 15 min
- Fry the erjingtiao and whole huajiao in the 60 ml oil over low heat until the chilli turns dark garnet and smells toasted, about 90 seconds; lift out, chop coarse and reserve for the top.
- In that same oil fry the doubanjiang over medium low heat until the paste loosens, the oil separates and runs bright red at the edge of the pan, about 3 minutes. There is no shortcut past this point. 3 min
- Add ginger and garlic, then the stock and soy; simmer 5 minutes, blanch the celery and sprouts in it until just limp, and lift them into a deep bowl. 5 min
- Take the pan off any hard boil and slide the beef into barely trembling stock, poaching 60 to 90 seconds until the slices turn opaque at the edges and curl; pour beef and stock over the vegetables.
- Pile the chopped chilli, ground huajiao and raw garlic on top, heat the remaining 120 ml oil to 200C (390F) and pour it over so it crackles and lifts the garlic in one wave.
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Resting meat & slicing against the grain 56 recipes
- It came off the heat BEFORE the target temperature, measured with a probe rather than by time, because carryover keeps driving the inside up after it is out.
- The probe went into the coldest likely part rather than the easiest one to reach: the reading that matters is the lowest one, not the first one.
- Rested for a time matched to its size, somewhere warm, and not cut into partway through to see how it is doing.
- The board is nearly dry when it is finally cut. A spreading pool means it was cut too early, and that liquid should have stayed inside.
- The grain was found and the knife went ACROSS it, so the fibres are cut short, and the blade was sharp enough that the slices hold together rather than tearing.
Where it goes wrong It was cut straight off the heat, usually because everything else was ready. The muscle is still contracted and the juice still driven to the centre, so it runs out onto the board; the meat is drier than it ever needed to be, and the flavour that left it is sitting in a puddle under the knife.
Blanching & shocking 76 recipes
- A large volume at a hard rolling boil, and enough of it that adding the food barely interrupts it; a pot that goes quiet has started stewing rather than blanching.
- Timed rather than watched, and short. This is an interruption in the cooking of something, not the cooking of it.
- The ice bath was made and standing beside the pot BEFORE anything went into the water, not started once the timer went off.
- It went straight into the ice water, fully submerged, and stayed until cold at the centre: a piece still warm inside is still cooking, and the arrest has not happened yet.
- Drained and dried afterwards rather than left sitting in water, so it does not carry that water into whatever it meets next.
Where it goes wrong The ice bath was not ready, so the food sat draining in a colander while its own residual heat carried on cooking it. By the time it cooled it was a stage past where it was pulled, and exact arrest is the entire reason for blanching rather than simply boiling.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.