dry fried Sichuan beef
The woks of life
Very easy and very tasty. This recipe includes Sichuan peppercorns and doubanjiang (fermented bean paste), both bold ingredients that can easily overpower a dish. Before making the stir fry, I worried it would be either too spicy from the peppercorns or too funky from the doubanjiang. I was glad to be wrong about this. The recipe's flavors are well-balanced. The rich beef complements the peppers and bean paste. I also liked that, as the name indicates, this is a dry stir fry. It does not produce much sauce, which is a welcome changeup from most wok recipes I've tried. My understanding is that Chinese American stir fries are typically on the saucier side, and traditional Chinese stir fries comparatively dry. This recipe makes me curious to try more traditional Chinese dishes which lean away from sauciness and instead emphasize well-seasoned proteins.
One thing that makes this recipe easy is that it calls for a nice cut of steak, which does not require much prep to be tasty. There's no need to marinate or velvet the steak; all we did was slice it up and toss it in salt ahead of time. Admittedly, one consequence of this choice is that this stir fry is more expensive than others which use, say, chicken. Nonetheless, this is by no means a bank busting dinner, and it comes together in under 30 minutes.