Beef & Broccoli

I made Beef & Broccoli today from a super simple recipe that one of my students gave to me. I modified the recipe that she gave me to make it acceptable for The No Food Fun Life. I removed the cornstarch, used twice as much broccoli, and added roasted sesame seeds. The results were tasty!

I'll jot down the general recipe, and then let you know how I tweaked it to get as close as I could to no added sugar, carbs, or starches.

Sauce
2 tbsp Soy Sauce (or Liquid Aminos substitute), 2 tbsp Oyster Sauce, 1 tbsp Rice Vinegar, 1 tbsp Sherry Cooking Wine, 1 tbsp Cornstarch (which I omitted). Combine everything, marinate about 1lb Beef slices. I added roasted sesame seeds for fun.

Recipe
Stir fry a whole bunch of Broccoli (like 4 heads of florets) with a sprinkle of salt & pepper, after a few minutes drizzle a bit of Sesame Oil (mostly for aroma & flavor) and continue to stir fry until tender. Remove Broccoli. Add beef & Sauce... stir fry until beef is cooked, add the broccoli back in until everything is coated in sauce and hot (I modified this last step).

One thing I learned from this cooking adventure is that sugar is lurking in everything that makes stuff delicious. Oyster sauce is in a lot of Chinese cooking as a base for many sauces. No wonder it's tasty - it's got 5g of sugar per tablespoon. Two tablespoons add up to almost half of the recommended 25g of added sugar that a healthy adult woman should aim to stay below per day. And, usually, people overlook sauces and condiments when thinking about their daily consumption. So, it can really sneak its way into our daily intake.

So... to combat the sugar and cornstarch, I got a little creative. As stated above, I didn't add the cornstarch to the sauce - it has 7g carbs per tablespoon. Next, I cooked the broccoli, set it aside, cooked the beef & marinade... then I removed the meat with tongs and left the sauce simmering in the wok. I diluted 1 tbsp cornstarch in cold water and added it to the sauce and let it boil a bit. Once it thickened, I poured it out into a bowl - like gravy.

I ate my beef with the minimal sauce that had soaked into it with an oversized helping of yummy broccoli. It made me feel not so worried/guilty about the sugar - and my husband was able to enjoy the full flavors and thick sauciness of a pretty good dish of Beef & Broccoli. Solid compromise.

Success... and I've got enough for tomorrow's lunch at work - sweet! Pun intended.