Cooking For Engineers

[Dilbert]

Velveting in the broadest sense is aimed at making a meat more tender.
Most Asian cuisines incorporate the technique - and having experience crispy tender beef in/on various stir fry type dishes, I set out to accomplish the feat in my own kitchen.

Basic steps:
Slice the beef into thin strips
Salt lightly and let stand
Heavy dredge/coating in corn starch - allow to stand 2-3 hours
Pan fry and drain.

This is a ribeye steak - it's just a tad thicker than I would prefer for this dish. Sliced and cleaned up from excess fat and connective tissue.
For two - weight was 300g / 10.58 ounces before trim, 230g / 8.11 ounces net after trim.


Sliced and lightly salted - this should stand 2-3 hours in the refrigerator, allowing the salt time to penetrate. Salted + ready to dredge:


After coating allow to stand at room temperature. The second photo shows the corn starch coating being soaked; toss/dredge the beef strips once or twice more to keep the coating adequate.


Preheat the fry pan - use a very shallow oil amount. With the velveting and being so thin, it only takes 45 - 60 seconds on the first side and 30 seconds on the flip side to cook.
I like to shake off and lay out all the beef strips in advance so I can pick them off the plate quickly and into the pan. I've found trying to do that on the fly the first strips in the pan are cooked before I can get the last strips out of the corn starch....


These are the finished crispy beef strips:


Paired with a "Mongolian Stir Fry" - similar to most other stir fry type dishes except ramen noodles are added into the mix vs. served over rice.

[Cassy0110]

Isn't it too dry? How is it?