Stir fry is cheap, quick, full of vegetables, and can have enough spice to clear out any stuffed nose. It can be easily bulked up further with rice, noodles, and frozen vegetables in lieu of fresh ones. Build a base sauce to simmer it in, and you’ll have dinner and leftovers! All in all, it’s a fairly inexpensive meal, and you can typically get a few meals out of it with the right ingredients.
What you will need:
-Beef
-Vegetables (your choice of what kind)
-Rice
-Spices
-Soya sauce
To start off, we’ll need to prepare the beef. I used two eye of round marinating steaks, cutting off the fat and slicing them into strips. You can also buy beef strips labelled as being for stir fries, but nearly any cheap cut will do. In a bowl, prepare your stir fry’s sauce by mixing together enough soya sauce (I had teriyaki flavoured) to cover the beef in a cereal-sized bowl. Add in your spices (I used cayenne, pepper, and some garlic) and begin marinating your beef. About 10Đ20 minutes is best, as this allows the flavours to sink in and tenderize the meat a little before cooking.
Before you begin to cook the beef you will want to start the rice (or whatever you chose to use). I have covered cooking rice before in this column, but here are the quick notes: rinse off starch with cold water, place in a pot with double that amount of water, add salt, bring to a boil, cover and simmer until water is gone.
Once your beef is ready, dump it in to a pan and fry at medium temperature until cooked. While the beef is cooking, prepare your chosen vegetables; I used some frozen “Japanese medley” veggies. Once the beef is cooked, place the vegetables in the mix, cover, and allow it to simmer for 15Đ20 minutes.
If you chose to use noodles with your stir fry, you would want to add those to the mix around now, once the vegetables are mostly ready. The noodles just need to turn soft and do not require much cooking, and they will also absorb much of your sauce.
Once everything is cooked, put it on a plate, and serve. Nothing fancy, but it fills the void and tastes pretty good. If you up the ante on the spices, it will clear out most colds and un-stuff any nose. You are also not relegated to beef with this recipe; chicken stir fries are great, too! (Albeit, slightly more expensive for the starving student.)
Happy eating!