Sichuan1 Beef

Recipe from Lawrence C.C. Chu



Strips of marinated beef are deep-fried twice to create a light, crispy texture on the outside. Just before serving, the beef is hot-mixed in a tangy sauce made with garlic, ginger, soy sauce, and red rice vinegar then served on top of puffy rice noodles.

Yields:

6-8 servings

Time Required:

Ingredients:

Marinade

Batter


Sauce


Preparation:

Cut flank steak against the grain into ¼ by 1 by 1 ½" (6x25x38 mm) -thick slices. Combine with MARINADE ingredients in the order listed, mixing well. Let stand for 10 mins.

Combine cornstarch and water to make a paste; set aside.

To deep-fry, heat 4 cups (945 mL) oil in a wok (or electric deep-fat fryer) to 350°F (175°C). Add rice sticks, and deep-fry for about 30 secs. until puffy. Remove, break into small pieces, and arrange on serving platter. Remove any pieces left in oil and then return oil to 350°F (175°C). Dip beef slices, a few at a time, into cornstarch paste, and then deep-fry in oil, until a hard crust is formed. Remove, drain, and keep oil warm. Skim oil for any leftover crust, and discard.

Combine SAUCE ingredients thoroughly; set aside.

To deep-fry again, bring oil back to 350°F (175°C). Add beef all at once, and fry for about 1 min., until hard crust forms again. Remove and drain.

To hot mix, remove all but 3 Tbsp. (45 mL) oil from wok. Add ginger and garlic, cooking until fragrant. Stir in sauce, bring to a boil, and thicken with 1 Tbsp. (15 mL) cornstarch paste, until the consistency of syrup is reached. Sprinkle with chilli oil and sesame oil. Return beef to wok, and toss with green onion. Mix well, and serve on top of rice sticks.

To serve, toss beef with rice sticks at the table.

Author's Notes

"Hot mixing" is just that: Quickly mixing crisp, deep-fried or cooked ingredients with a sauce. It's intended to mix the ingredients, not cook them any more.

This recipe is ideal for entertaining, because everything, except for the hot mixing, can be done in advance.



Rich Chicken Broth

A good, rich-tasting chicken broth is essential to Chinese cooking, so, in my restaurant, I make no exceptions. I always use 4-5 lb. (1.8-2.3 kg.) chickens, because I'm preparing food in such volume, but you can use a regular broiler-fryer, if you prefer. I firmly believe a good broth needs no additives. So, why not take a little time (and not much effort), and prepare this chicken broth?

Yields:

8 servings

Time Required:

Ingredients:

Preparation:

To par-boil, place chicken (or bones) in an 8-qt. (7.5 L) stockpot. Cover with boiling water, and cook for 5 mins., to get rid of the scum. Pour chicken into a colander, rinse under cold water, and return chicken to pot.

To cook, add water and vegetables. Bring to a boil, reduce heat, and simmer uncovered for about 1 hrs. Occasionally skim surface as needed. Remove from head and cool, then strain well before using.

Author's Notes

As I mentioned, this recipe produces a rich broth that is the basic stock for many of my other soups. If you prefer not to make it, or you don't have the time, always use chicken bouillon (cubes)3 in water, rather than the less flavourful, canned chicken broth.

Save your chicken bones. You can use them to make broth, instead of a whole chicken.

Since the vegetables are added only for flavour, use tips and ends of onions and knobs of ginger root. I mention this since I was once told by a student that she couldn't find "knobs" of ginger at her market.

If you make broth several hours ahead of serving time, let it cool with the bones still inside. If made several days in advance, try freezing it in ice cube trays; when frozen, store cubes in a sealed freezer bag (1 ice cube equals ¼ to ⅓ cup broth).


1 Chef Chu's spelling was "Szechwan", following the 19th Century Wade-Giles romanisation system predominant in 1980, when Chu's cookbook appeared, In today's now-preferred Hanyu Pinyin system, the name of that province on the upper Yangtze River is rendered "Sichuan".

2 Quarts, pints, cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, and fl. oz. are as defined in US Customary Units, not to be confused with differing British imperial, "legal", "coffee", Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian, Latin American, Japanese, Russian, or Dutch definitions — further proof that everyone needs the metric system.

3 "Corn starch" is powdered starch processed from the New World grain maize (from Spanish, orig. from Nahuatl), which grain the USA/Canada call "corn", unlike the rest of the English-speaking world, which reserves "corn" to mean cereal grains generically. This starch product, needed here in its customary role as a thickening agent, is called "corn starch" in the US/Canada, but "cornflour" in the UK and most other anglophone lands — not to be confused with whole maize grain: That product — not a thickening agent — is called "polenta", "corn meal", or "corn flour" in the US/Canada, depending on how finely milled, and called "maize flour" in the UK and most other places. Australians should beware that their "cornflour" is starch extracted from wheat kernel, sometimes more-helpfully labelled as "wheaten cornflour". As if that weren't confusing enough, the maize-based thickener may be labelled (in Australia) either as "corn flour" or as "corn starch", so beware. Further, the maize flour product, there, is labelled as "cornmeal".

Note that whole-maize grain is traditionally, in Meso-American cultures of origin, wisely soaked in alkaline solution ("nixtamalised") to increase bioavailability and thereby prevent niacin deficiency (pellagra), among other important benefits, yielding "masa" (lit. dough) aka "masa de maíz" (lit. maize dough), also available in dried & ground form as "masa harina" (lit. dough flour) aka "harina de maíz" (lit. maize flour), and in its unground form, hominy. As further complication, Americans distinguish "corn flour", meaning prepared from maize endosperm only, from "maize flour" for use of whole maize — the former, neutral-flavoured; the latter, much more nutritious.

Origin of the naming mess: Originally, North America shared with Mother England the language's original meaning of "corn" to mean cereal grains generically (from Old English "corn" meaning single seed of any cereal plant, orig. from Proto-Germanic "kurnam" meaning small seed). The colonists got the gift of maize from native peoples, therefore at first calling it "Indian corn". Later, in the USA and Canada, "Indian corn" got worn down to just "corn", while the original meaning of "corn" was lost, locally. "Maize" is thus now the least-ambiguous term in international contexts, though many Americans either don't know that word or reserve it for variants from Latin-American (and Spanish) cooking.

4 Rice sticks, also called rice vermicelli or rice noodles, are thin, long, brittle sticks made from rice flour and sold in 4-to-6 oz. (110-to-170 g) packages. When deep-fried, they puff up and become lightly crunchy. Or, soaked in water, to become soft and noodle-like, they're used in soup or chow mein. Store dry rice sticks, tightly wrapped, in a dry location almost indefinitely.

5 For easy bouillon, consider Summit Hill Foods's "Better Than Bouillon Base" paste, dissolved in hot tap water. It's fairly high quality, available in large 8 oz. (227 g) jars, and (the main point) a heck of a lot better than any bouillon cubes. Flavours: roasted chicken, roasted beef, turkey, ham, and vegetable.

6 Chinese vinegar comes in three forms: Black Rice Vinegar is used with braised dishes and as a dipping sauce. Red Rice Vinegar is with sweet and pungent dishes and for dipping steamed crab. White Rice Vinegar is used for sweet and pungent dishes.

7 Minced is better. Crushing vegetables breaks all of the constituent cellulose-rich cells' walls and has unfortunate consequences to the food's tastes, particularly in the case of garlic, the crushed paste of which easily becomes bitter, lacking flavour nuance, and sometimes picking up a metallic aftertaste.

So, think of this as your motivation to get a nice, really sharp 8" (20 cm) chef's knife for mincing (producing 1⁄16" = 1.5 mm cuts), and a good cutting board.

8 Cornstarch paste is a thin paste made from equal parts of cold water and corn starch. It's essential in many Chinese dishes (but be careful not to over-thicken). Stir just before using. Store covered in the refrigerator for 1-2 days.

Taken from: Lawrence C.C. Chu's classic cookbook Chef Chu's Distin:ctive Cuisine Of China, page 142, published 1980 by Harper and Row, which can be checked out in scanned format at Internet Archive. Thank you! (Chu's the chef / restaurateur of beloved local restaurant Chef Chu's, in Los Altos, California.)

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/sichuan-beef.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on Oct. 4, 2026. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2026 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)