Have You Seen the Price of Beef?

Beef is one of most dense sources of protein, essential to muscle health. Beef also contains zinc and is a good source of iron, helping to fight iron-deficiency anemia (source: WebMD). If you spend any time in U.S. grocery stores, you will notice that, for the best cuts, the price of beef is upwards of $11 per pound (454 grams). Having grilled steaks for dinner is almost as expensive as an evening dining out. One of the benefits of learning to cook Chinese cuisine is that many authentic Chinese dishes can stretch a small amount of protein to feed a whole family. We have several Chinese beef dishes on My Chinese Home Kitchen that can stretch a pound or pound and a half (454 to 680 grams) to make multiple meals.

Necessity is the mother of invention

For various reasons of geography and climate, Chinese cuisines are the result of ingenious adaptation to scarcity.

…the vast majority of Chinese spent their lives short of fuel, cooking oil, utensils, and even water….Chinese ingenuity has gone in another and ecologically sounder direction: designing the most versatile possible tools that can be used for every imaginable task.

Anderson, E. N., The Food of China. 1988, Yale University Press

The traditional design of Chinese stoves yields an incredible amount of heat for cooking with a modest use of fuel. However, as Anderson writes, the most indispensable tool in the Chinese kitchen is the knife. Knife skills are crucial for any professional chef, but this is also true in the typical Chinese home. Meat is usually cut on the bias, in thin, broad slices that yield a maximum surface area for rapid cooking and absorbing flavors and tenderizing from sauces. Thus, good knife skills are essential to make the most economical use of beef.

Chinese dishes typically make maximum use of a small amount of protein in this way. Further, this approach allows tougher cuts of meat to become tender and palatable with a short time for marinade. Traditionally, beef was typically eaten after the animal that pulled the plow died. This meat is tougher and leaner than beef from animals raised for slaughter. So, using these techniques, you can offset the high price of beef and still enjoy tender, delicious, healthy beef dishes.

Cuts of beef to choose for Chinese beef dishes

Typically, lean beef is used in Chinese beef dishes, and because of the way it is prepared, you can use cheaper cuts, like sirloin, bottom round, shoulder steaks, and flank steak. Premium steak cuts, such as USDA Choice NY Strip or Ribeye are currently between $11 to $15 per pound. The price of USDA Choice or Select shoulder steak, sirloin, and bottom round is typically much less, ranging from $5 to $9 per pound, and are perfect for Chinese cooking techniques.

USDA beef grading explained

There are three grades of beef for sale in stores, and two styles of aging. The most tender, flavorful, and expensive are Prime, dry-aged cuts. Most beef in stores is wet-aged. Dry aging is done by hanging the beef for a period of time to allow the meat to become more tender, but this also results in loss. The best steak houses serve dry-aged beef.

The USDA grades, Prime, Choice, and Select, are based on the amount of marbling (fat) in the beef. Young tender beef with a lot of marbling is graded as Prime. The marbling makes the meat tender and juicy, full of flavor, and this is the best grade for grilling. It’s also the most expensive grade of beef.

Choice grade beef is the most common in grocery stores, and has less marbling than Prime cuts. Choice beef is also quite juicy and flavorful, and remains tender when grilled (NY Strip, Ribeye, etc.). Leaner cuts are better cooked with braising, roasting, or simmering techniques.

Select cuts have the least marbling, and may also come from older animals, such as dairy cows that are too old to produce milk. These cuts are best for braising, roasting, marinading, simmering, etc. They are the least expensive per pound, but still delicious and very tender when cooked using Chinese techniques.

Making two recipes with a pound (454 grams) of beef

A single cut of 16 ounces can be divided and used to make any two or three of these recipes:

Spicy Chinese Cold Beef

This quick spicy Chinese cold beef recipe (Liáng niúròu 凉牛肉) is slippery-coated, blanched, and mixed with chili sauce for a quick beef salad.

After slicing and marinating the meat and chopping the ingredients, we blanch the beef and then make a spicy chili sauce. The chili sauce is then stirred together with the meat and cilantro, and you're done.

Use a lean cut, such as flank steak or sirloin.

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Tomato, Beef, and Potato Soup

This is actually a simple family recipe. It’s not really a soup, but vegetables and beef in a broth. A true Chinese soup is mostly liquid. In this case, the broth and ingredients are almost 1:1. This dish is eaten a bit like curry, paired with rice. Although I did not use the seasoning of curry. I made this dish for my friend, Yun. Our lunch staple was rice, but she does not like plain rice. She likes to pour broth into the rice and mix it together to coat and flavor the rice. So this time she said to me, “Can you make a dish with a broth?” Of course, I am happy to do that.

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Restaurant Style Mapo Tofu

Technique: Red-braised (Hóngshāo)

Cuisine: Sichuan

On my Chinese home kitchen we have published an authentic home style recipe for Mapo Tofu. Mapo tofu is a Sichuan dish that is popular in China and around the world. Do you wonder how restaurant style Mapo Tofu is prepared?

I learned this dish at New Oriental Cooking School and it turned out to be spicy and delicious compared to our home-style version of Mapo Tofu. Note that when we cook the tofu, the secret is to heat the tofu for enough time, so the surface of the tofu is hot, and the inside of it is also hot. If the inside of the tofu is cool, then this dish has failed.

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Authentic Mapo Tofu

Most Sichuan dishes are mainly spicy, and Mapo Tofu also has the same taste as Sichuan dishes. Therefore, Chinese people think that Mapo tofu and rice are a good match, which greatly improves people's appetite. We will be cooking homemade Mapo Tofu today. When beef is not available, we can use pork instead. 

You can use peanut oil, soybean oil, or canola oil for frying, but the flavor of Chinese roasted rapeseed oil with Sichuan peppercorns creates the authentic taste experience you would enjoy in a restaurant in Chengdu.

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Making two dishes with 1.5 to 2 pound cuts of beef

A purchase of a single, low-cost, lean cut of beef, such as a sirloin, bottom round, or shoulder steak, can make any two of these dishes yielding up to four servings each. With the price of beef at $5 to $8 per pound for bottom round, a 1.5 pound cut will cost $9 to $13. Using these recipes, when paired with rice and a side of vegetables, you can get up to 8 servings for a total cost of $1.63 per serving (for the beef).

Chinese Diced Beef with Mild Chili Peppers

Today we will be cooking healthy with healthy ingredients. If you like beef, you can try cooking this dish with me. This recipe uses a technique called slippery-coating, similar to the Green Pepper Beef Tenderloin. The beef is marinated with thick starch, then dry-blanched in warm oil (at the temperature of boiling water), not hot oil like a deep-fry. This gives the beef a tender, velvet texture.

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Beef Tenderloin with Green Peppers

Our teacher, Zhu Jinge, taught us this delicious, mild beef tenderloin recipe, using a dry-blanching technique in low temperature oil. Blanching is the technique of cooking a vegetable or meat in a moderately hot liquid, near the boiling point, for a few seconds to a few minutes. Before blanching, the beef tenderloin is seasoned and tenderized with a marinade of baking soda, starch, wine, soy sauces, oil and sugar. After blanching, the beef tenderloin strips are finished in the stir-fry to a crispy coating glazed with starch water (DăQiàn 打芡). The green peppers give the dish a bright color and contrasting texture: Crispy peppers with tender beef. Other ingredients include Chinese staples: scallions, garlic, and ginger.

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Red-braised Beef Pot with Tofu

In the cold winter, we always like to eat hot food. If you're cold after only half the meal you will lose the mood to continue eating. Cold dishes on the table can make you unhappy. So we need to cook a food that stays hot throughout lunch or dinner. This nutritious, red-braised beef pot has tofu and cabbage, and will warm you on a cold day.

Technique: Red-braised (Hongshao)

Flavor: Salty and slightly spicy

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