Stir Fried Beef with Chili

Here's another simple one for y'all that my dad taught me. Really really quick and easy Chinese stir fried dish... but it's DELICIOUS! Except I just had the dentist cut the gums around my wisdom tooth so eating this was quite painful due to the spiciness... but for those of you who DIDN'T just have an operation on your gums, it should be quite a pleasant experience. It's very typical Chinese... very simple, very quick and very delicious!

To make enough for two people, you'll need

- rice (cook this in the rice cooker or however you want)

- 3 green peppers (you need a certain kind of pepper, I'm not sure what they're called but you can look at the picture to get an idea. once I find out the name I'll update this, meanwhile if you know the name of this type of pepper let me know)

- beef skirt (amount shown in picture later)

- 3-4 cloves of garlic

- a bit of ginger

- a tablespoon of soy sauce

First thing you'll want to do is cut up the garlic. I explained how to do this in an earlier post so won't get into detail but basically take each clove one by one, cut off the hard parts, crush under the blade, peel off skin, and then cut it into little bits. It should look like the picture on the left.

Next, you'll want to cut the ginger. The following pics should give you a good idea of how much you should use. First cut it into thin sheets like in the first picture below, then cut these into thin strips, and then cut these strips into little bits.

Take out the peppers and wash them. Once again I'm not sure what this type of green pepper is called so please let me know if you do know:

Next thing you want to do is cut the peppers right down the middle, just like my dad is doing in the picture. If you want it to be spicier, keep the seeds in - you can also take them out to make it milder. After cutting them down the middle, slice the peppers into thin, long strips, as shown on the left. Do this for all of them. You'll end up with this:

Now it's time to cut the meat. We used about the amount displayed below, but I'd suggest a little more. Anyways first cut it into half length-wise, and then slice it into REALLY thin slices... as thin as possible. Look at the picture for an idea of what it should look like after.

Put the sliced beef skirt into a bowl and add a teaspoon of soy sauce. Using your hands, squeeze/mix the beef with the soy sauce until it's evenly distributed and the sauce has soaked into the meat.

Now it's time to cook! Look at the following picture for a model of proper stir frying technique:

First thing you'll want to do is put some oil in the wok, and then add the ginger and garlic once the oil gets hot. Medium to medium high heat should be just fine. After cooking that for like two minutes, add the sliced peppers and stir fry until it's about as cooked as you want it to be. I like to stir fry it until it darkens and softens a bit. Once it's ready, remove everything from the wok and place the peppers/ginger/garlic aside.

You'll now want to cook the meat. Add more oil to the wok and cook the meat until you can't see any more red. Because of the thinness of the sliced beef skirt, this should happen very quickly. Once there's no more red, add the peppers/garlic/ginger back in and stir for a minute, then take it out. It's ready to eat! Like any other Chinese stir fried dish, you're going to want to eat this with rice.

Here's the final dish, with a side of spinach. Sorry for the off centered picture, I was just too excited to eat it!

Bon appetit! Told you it'd be simple ;).