Hunan beef is a delicous Chinese recipe! Tender, velveted beef with a sweet, sour and spicy sauce. A perfect recipe for a great night in. This is a popular takeaway substitute in my house!
I first came across Hunan beef when looking for a good fakeaway style stir fry and I found a great recipe from Khin’s Kitchen. After playing around with that recipe and taking a look at a few others I built my own, and I’ve not stopped making it since. My partner is not great with spice, but she loves it so much she picks her chillis out to give to me and asks for Hunan beef regularly! This would go great with classic Chinese sides such as my egg fried rice or chow mein.
Hunanese Cuisine
Hunan beef understandably comes from the Hunan province of China. This region is a central province in China. It is full of rivers, lakes and mountains; plenty of natural beauty! It is also the home of Hunanes cuisine, one of the Eight Great Traditions of Chinese Cuisine. Chinese food is extremely varied, and this is just one large part of the whole massive picture.
What really sets Hunanese food apart is it’s use of spice. Sichuan cuisine is normally the one attributed to being the spicy side of Chinese food. Hunanese food is really up there too! Hunanese cuisine gets it’s heat much more from large chilli content, rather than dried peppers and sichuan peppercorns. It also makes use of a lot more other fresh ingredients. This cuisine is not driven solely by spice though! It makes extensive use of garlic, shallots and black beans to give a wonderful depth of flavour. You will also find a good use of oils and dried or smoked ingredients too.
Ingredients aside, this cooking culture employs a lot of classic Chinese techniques. Stir-frying, braising, stewing, smoking and frying are all very popular. These techniques work so well with the ingredients to deliver punchy, flavour packed dishes!
Hunan Beef
This dish incorporates all the classic elements of Hunanese cooking. It incorporates chillis in numerous forms, fresh, dried and in oils. This gives a great depth of heat, hitting in different. It also delivers a broad and exciting range of flavour! This sits over the top of a delicious flavour base of garlic, shallot and ginger to deliver that classic Chinese food taste.
One ingredient that is essential to creating the deep savouriness of this dish is something called douchi. This is a type of salted and fermented black soy bean. These beans have a delicious saltiness and umaminess that can’t be matched with much else. I think they are really a requirement to get this dish just right. While these are certainly not a staple supermarket ingredient, they can be found easily and cheaply in Asian supermarkets or even on Amazon!
All of these lovely ingredients are held together by a truly fantastic sauce. A combination of chilli oil, light and dark soy sauce, rice wine vinegar and sugar. It’s packed with sweet, sour and salty flavours! Typically, recipes will use chiu chow chilli oil, but I think chilli crisp is a great choice! It gives great flavour and crunch, with a little less heat.
This recipe cooks really fast. It is a stir fried dish that requires a really hot wok. Overall, the cooking time takes a little under 10 minutes. The beef cooks for maybe half of this, and the trick to making it tender is a technique called velveting.
Velveting the Beef
Velveting is an essential Chinese wok cooking technique. There are generally two different ways of doing this. The first makes use of baking soda. This technique raises the pH of the meat, which stops the proteins from tightening up as much. The second involves coating the meat in cornstarch and oil or egg. This creates a protective layer than locks in juices and keeps the meat moist. Both techniques help retain moisture and typically involve marinating the meat first to add flavour and moisture.
I prefer the cornstarch method. The baking soda method is faster, but does require rinsing off the meat afterwards to remove the taste of it. I think the cornstarch method lets you add in more flavour, and also gives a nice coating that can crisp up a little.
Hunan Beef. Sweet, sour & Spicy!
Ingredients
Method
- Slice the steak up into thin strips and add to a bowl.
- Add in the soy sauce and mix thoroughly so it soaks into the beef.
- Add in the cornstarch and mix to coat. Add in the oil immediately after and mix again to evenly coat.
- Leave to marinate for 15 minutes. Move onto the fresh ingredients in the meantime!
- Thinly slice the red chilli and cut the red pepper into 1.5cm chunks. Cut the spring onions into 2cm long pieces, thinly slicing some of the greens as a garnish.
- Grate the garlic and ginger and set aside.
- Rinse the douchi with water for 10 seconds and drain. Chop them up roughly.
- Cut the dried chillis in half and empty them of the seeds.
- Mix all the sauce ingredients into a bowl and set aside.
- Heat a wok over high heat and coat the whole surface in a neutral, high smoke point oil.
- Add the beef and let sit for 2 minutes. Toss and cook for another 2 minutes until cooked through and crisping up. Remove and set aside.
- Add in the dried chillis and spring onions and cook for 30 seconds, tossing regularly.
- Add in the red pepper and fresh chilli and cook for a further 30 seconds until softening.
- Add the garlic and ginger and toss until fragrant. Add in the douchi and cook, tossing regularly, for another 30 seconds.
- Add the beef back in and cook to combine. Add in the sauce and mix well. Cook for 30 seconds to a minute until everything is evenly coated and the sauce is thickened. Add in the spring onion garnish and serve!
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