Chinese beef

If:

1. It's not already too late;

2. You're slicing your beef very thin; and

3. The beef you bought either doesn't have a grain, or was sliced thinly across the grain.

Then:

A. Put the sliced beef in a bowl, and add just enough corn starch to coat the meat lightly;

B. Toss the meat in the corn starch until it is coated (wait for it) lightly. Discard any extra starch;

C. Add enough wine to cover the meat completely. Stir the meat in the wine with a chopstick, add just a splash more wine (to make sure the meat is completely submerged) and stir again;

D. If desired, add soy sauce, and/or sugar, and/or vinegar or citrus, and/or slivered ginger and/or some minced garlic to taste; and

E. Allow to marinate for no less than five minutes and no more than one hour; 20 - 30 minutes is ideal.

BDL

They sometimes use some baking soda dissolved in water to tenderize beef. Bit of a cheat I suppose but it is done.

in china we use a lot of baking soda to tenderize the beef much more faster than with corn flour and wine, even though they said too much not good for your body. sometimes we also use rice flour for the beef.

and if i not wrong u can try making steam beef cover with rice flour the stir fry it with black bean sauce taste really good :):):)

sometimes in some places they use pineapple juice to make it tenderize (not just beef even lamb too), i guess there's a lot of ways to tenderize beef or meat for in every part of china
:):):)

I've seen some substitute the baking soda in water for alkaline water in some of the doughs.

Do they ever use the alkaline water for tenderizing?

Phil

never see alkaline water for tenderising beef but i have seen it to tenderize lamb but not in china in Indonesia, they also have some unique way to tenderize lamb by using papaya leaf :chef::chef::chef:

Using papaya as a tenderizer isn't unique to Indonesia. On the contrary, most Western and "international" meat tenderizers are based on papaya enzymes (papin aka papain), or an extract from pineapple (bromolin, etc.); and has been long known that these fruits do a particularly quick and efficient job of breaking down connective tissue. Both fruits and their extracts have also been commonly used as aids to digestion following for people suffering from a "too much meat" stomach-ache.

Since the plant is indigenous to the Western hemisphere, the discovery of those properties probably is too.

BDL