Monday’s can be a hectic day. You’re still getting back into the weekday mindset. Maybe your catching up on work from the week before, or work that has built up of over the weekend. Whatever the reason, Monday isn’t the day that you have a few hours to make a nice meal.

Today in my continuing series built specifically for those days when you have limited time to make food we make beef and broccoli. Not just any beef and broccoli. We make…

Just like last week when we made pork chops with smashed potatoes in 30 minutes or less, this post will be broken down into times. This should give you some reference as to what you should be doing when. I also do this to show you that this can really be done in under 30 minutes from start to finish. This meal should feed up to four people.

For those of you thinking “Yes, but you’re a professional chef. Just because you can do this in half an hour doesn’t mean I can.” To that I say boooooooooo. Just joking. Really, I have to stop to take pictures, and write down what I’m doing. So that should make up for any time advantages I would otherwise have.

Before we get into this I want to say that I made this last night. I had an exhausting weekend. It was good, but very tiring. Last night when I got home just after 5, the last thing I wanted to do was go to the grocery store to get the ingredients for this, or even to go home and cook it. But, knowing that is was only going to take me 30 minutes and then I could relax made it much easier for me to push myself through it. That’s kind of the whole point.

I started cooking at 6:20 pm. Here’s what I did.

I measured out 1 cup of basmati rice, and to that I added 2 cups of water. You can use chicken, beef, or vegetable stock as well. I seasoned the rice with a pinch of salt and pepper, add 1 tsp of olive oil and put it on the burner on high.

At 6:22 I started making the sauce.

I combined 1 tbsp honey, with 2-3 tbsp soy sauce (depends on saltiness and personal preference.), 3 drops of fish sauce, and 1 tsp sambal chili sauce. I wanted to add a little cornstarch to this, but I didn’t have any. I would recommend mixing 1 tbsp of corn starch with 1/4 cup of water and add that to the sauce. Set it aside.

At 6:24 pm the sauce was done and I started prepping the vegetables.

For this I used 3 large mushrooms, 1 baseball sized onion, 2 cloves of garlic, a thumb sized piece of ginger, and 2 broccoli stalks.

Because the mushrooms were big I cut them into sixes. The onion I peeled and thinly sliced. Garlic, was peeled and sliced. The ginger, also peeled, but minced. To this I first sliced it, then I cut the slices into match sticks and then I cut across the match stick to give me a very fine mince. Finally, the broccoli, I cut the head off the steams and cutting from the bottom of the head separated the florets. I then peeled the stem and chopped that up too.

While I was cutting the vegetables, the rice started to boil (6:27 pm) so I put a lid on the pot and turned the heat to low and set a 17 minute timer.

I finished cutting the vegetables at 6:34 and put my wok on the stove on high to heat up. My wok is cast iron, so it takes longer to heat than woks made of lighter metals. You may not need to heat yours as long as I need to. But the idea is to heat the wok (or large skillet if you don’t have a wok) while I’m cutting the meat. That way, as soon as the meat is cut it goes in the hot wok. No waiting around.

At 6:35 I moved the vegetables off the cutting board, on to a plate and started cutting the meat.

This was an inside round steak. Usually best for marinating. It is a tougher cut. But, when sliced thin, across the grain of the meat, it can work well for stir-fry. It also happens to be pretty cheap. This pieces was just over $6.

We cut meat across the grain because this shortens the muscle fibres. If you were to cut with the grain, you wouldn’t be able to chew the meat. It would be way too tough. The grain is the direction that the muscle fibres go. Just like with a piece of wood.

For this, I first sliced it in half lengthwise or with the grain. Then I stacked the two pieces of meat on top of each other and sliced it into thin strips.

At 6:38 I started cooking the meat. My wok was already hot so I just need to add 2 tbsp of oil, I used canola, and then drop the meat in.

I didn’t cook the meat all the way through as it was going to be partially cooked again. I browned most of the pieces and then removed the meat from the pan and pour the sauce over it. This allowed the meat to soak up some of the sauce flavour while I started cooking the vegetables.

At 6:43 the rice timer went off. I removed the pot from the burner and let it sit, still covered. By 6:42 I was done the meat was out of the wok.

Once the meat came out of the pan, I added a bit more oil and then started cooking the onions. About two minutes later I added the mushrooms and broccoli. At 6:46 I added the garlic and ginger. Finally, at 6:47 the meat and sauce when back into the pan and cooked for two minutes.

At 6:49 I plate the meal. Rice on the bottom, beef and broccoli on top and then a few sesame seeds for garnish. By 6:50, I was done taking pictures and was happily eating.

Conclusion

I love this meal. Any stir-fry really. Everything you need in one dish. This can be easily scaled up or down for large or smaller families. It also makes great leftovers.

One thing I hope that you took from this is how simply a stir-fry sauce can be put together. There is no need to buy bottled sauces that are full of preservatives and flavour enhancing chemicals. A good stir-fry sauce can be put together in under two minutes.

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