When you want to skip going out to eat and stay in with the perfect hot and ready recipe, few can compare to tender beef and fresh veggies in a smooth and savory sauce. Coincidentally, a good Beef and Black Bean Sauce recipe delivers just that. With the perfect blend of amazing flavor and textures, it’s no wonder this is a classic favorite at Chinese restaurants worldwide, and soon you’ll be armed with the valuable information of how to make it for yourself!
First and foremost, this recipe will give you plenty to enjoy, so it’s perfect for feeding the family with room for seconds! And because you get so much from it, we had to use an equally generous amount of Halal beef, that’s why we used a chuck roast from Midamar, the perfect cut of Halal beef to ensure that you’re never running low on tender beefy goodness in this recipe. Chuck roast can tend to be tougher cuts of beef, so giving this time to velvet in water and baking soda at the start before marinating can help give you deliciously tender pieces of beef.
After a few hours of letting the beef sit and tenderize, rinse it under running water until it runs clear then the beef cuts are ready for their marinade. Luckily, this marinade only needs about a half an hour to do the job, which is the perfect time to prep the veggies. And we used plenty of veggies for this, with a blend of onion, bell pepper, asparagus, mushrooms, and snow peas, there’s a great blend of earthy flavors with some more savory ones. They all cook into the perfect combination of tender with a satisfying crunch, providing fantastic texture to go the tender beef.
The sauce is also a blend of savory and tangy flavors, being mostly Halal beef stock with things like toasted sesame oil, oyster sauce, and black been with garlic sauce. You may ask yourself “Why are you making the sauce if you have black bean and garlic sauce already?” This comes as a thick paste with a strong concentration of flavor that really needs to be cut with broth and other things to bring down and complement the flavor. Whisk this all together in a large mixing bowl and you’re all set to get cooking.
Once you are cooking, everything is all set to get done in a large pot. Cook the pieces of beef in batches so each gets cooked thoroughly, then remove them from heat. If you need to, deglaze the bottom of the pot with a little bit of water and scrape off any stuck bits you may have so they don’t burn to the bottom when you cook the veggies. Speaking of veggies, all of these can be cooked together until they start to soften, then pour in the sauce, bring it to a nice simmer, and reintroduce the beef. The final step towards a thick and smooth sauce is stirring in a few tablespoons of cornstarch slurry. That’ll go a long way to making the sauce decadently creamy and coating each piece of beef and veggie with flavor, bringing the whole dish together before you serve it over some rice!
There you have it. After a fair amount of preparation, the actual cooking of this recipe is done in no time and couldn’t be simpler, just use a big pot or wok if you have one. Like I said before, this recipe with give you plenty, so get the whole family together and enjoy! It’s a great recipe for a weekend when you have the time and will give you leftovers to enjoy in the week for an easy dinner after a long day. Try it for yourself and let us know what you think! Share it with someone, enjoy it, and check out some of our other recipes while you’re at it. As always, we’ll have another great one for you next week.
