Thai Chili Beef America's Test Kitchen

I admittedly dear Thai food. Unfortunately, I haven't had a lot of luck creating Thai dishes at home that take that restaurant quality to them. My Pad See Ew turned out quite decently, but my struggles with other dishes are not to exist taken lightly–afterward at least a dozen attempts at red back-scratch, for example, I'm still not satisfied enough to share my recipe. So I am very happy to say that, held by the paw of the 'The Best International Recipe' cookbook by America's Test Kitchen, I have produced a restaurant quality Chili Beef dish in my ain kitchen. And zero could bring me more pleasure than to pass this recipe forth and so that yous tin, too! As with most stir fries, in that location's a lot of chopping and mincing up front, considering in one case the burner goes on the bodily cook fourth dimension is very brusque.

My principal modification to this recipe is doubling the sauce, but other than that information technology's very close to the original. Allow's become!

Ingredients

For the sauce

4 TBS fish sauce
four TBS rice vinegar
four TBS water
2 TBS light brown sugar
2 TBS Thai chili-garlic sauce (Sriracha)

For the marinade

i TBS fish sauce
i tsp light dark-brown sugar
3/4 tsp ground coriander
1/8 tsp white pepper

For the stir-fry

two lbs blade or flank steak
5 cloves garlic, minced
three TBS vegetable oil
iii Thai, serrano, or jalapeño peppers
iv large shallots
1/2 cup basil
1/2 loving cup cilantro
1 lime
1/3 cup roasted unsalted peanuts

Hither are all the ingredients. A possibly daunting amount–but please don't be deterred. Forge alee and realize your Thai dreams.

Mix all the ingredients for the sauce; fix aside.

It looks quite humble, but this sauce will shortly get my favorite part of the dish.

Besides, it will allow you to brand friends with this shady character:

The notorious fish sauce. Embrace it! I know I do. Just don't tell me how information technology'south made, okay?

Slice the steak crosswise on the bias, and then cutting into thin strips almost ¼ inch thick. I bought pre-sliced beef considering I've secretly wanted to for years–and it was on sale!

However, information technology wasn't cut thinly enough, so I did a footling extra slicing.

Mix the marinade ingredients together . . .

. . . and add together it to the beefiness strips.

Permit the meat marinate for at least 10 minutes (or up to an hour).

Now get your pocketknife ready: it'south time to practice all the chopping/mincing. Mince the garlic and mix it with 1 tsp of oil. Ready it aside.

Halve the hot peppers . . .

. . . and remove the seeds. I commonly scrape them out with a abrupt paring pocketknife. Cutting them into matchsticks.

If you're thinking this dish is going to be deathly spicy, don't worry–removing the seeds takes out virtually of the heat.

Quarter the shallots lengthwise . . .

. . . and using your fingers, separate the layers.

Set the shallots and chilies aside together in a bowl.

Roughly chop the cilantro (but leave the basil leaves whole unless they're unusually large–which mine were).

Cut the lime into wedges and lightly chop the peanuts–these garnishes are essential. I shouldn't even exist calling them garnishes. They're non mere extras; they're part of the family!

All our prep piece of work is now done. Y'all should have the following items right next to your skillet, ready to go:

Going clockwise from the top left: the beefiness. Vegetable or peanut oil. A clean bowl to put the cooked beef in. The garlic/oil mixture. The sauce. The chilies and shallots. Check!

A heads up: we're going to cook the beefiness in 3 batches. It may sound very time-consuming, but cooking in small batches ways the batches cook very very rapidly (in literally two and a one-half minutes per round), plus the beefiness will get nice and browned instead of steaming and becoming floppy due to overcrowding in the pan.

Alright! Things are most to get hot in here. Heat 2 tsp oil in a 12" cast iron skillet over high heat. When the oil starts shimmering, add 1/3 of the beef strips.

Immediately spread them out in the pan . . .

. . . and don't bear upon them for 2 minutes. Seriously–get that spatula away! You'll see they are cooking very quickly:

Don't be tempted! Go along your mitts off that meat.

Later on the total 2 minutes are up, they should be very nicely seared on one side. Stir-fry for 30 seconds, moving them around the pan until they're cooked through.

Remove the beef to a bowl:

Cook the remaining 2 batches of the beefiness in the same way.

Are yous tempted to cook information technology all together to save time? Don't. I've fabricated that error and it takes the concluding dish downward about 5 notches. Plus, it ends upward taking most just as long as the batch method.

Once the meat is all done, add 2 tsp oil to the skillet. When it's hot and shimmering, add together the shallot and red chilies.

Melt for about 3 minutes, stirring frequently, until they're getting soft and browned. Adjacent upwards: clear a space in the middle of the skillet and add together the garlic/oil mixture.