Beef and Broccoli

Last night, actually most of this coming week, we opted for recipes that aren't on the regular rotation for our dinner menu. One, because pasta is cheep, and two, chicken is on sale.

Now granted, beef and broccoli have little - but mostly nothing - to do with chicken, though you could probably swap one for the other fairly easily with this recipe, so the chicken is really for a few meals later int he week, we'll get to those... eventually.

Linked right here is the original recipe. The thing is, I didn't get around to reading it until after I purchased the ingredients and started cooking. I've got it attached to my Pinterest Board Food-Yum! and just below the picture is a quick break down of all the ingredients... somehow I managed to look right past all the low-sodium bits.

That's neither here nor there, it turned out pretty damn awesome, which is good because I really hated parting with $8 for the sesame oil. Doesn't feel so bad knowing it will be used again (the sesame seeds we forgot all about so, there's that.)

We used:

1.5 pounds chuck roast, about 1/4 inch slices and then cut those in half
1 bag frozen broccoli
1 small white onion quartered (the yellow ones just didn't look good)
1 cup beef broth
1/2 cup soy sauce
1 tbsp sesame oil
1/3 cup brown sugar (light, I just double checked, it's what we had)
3 garlic cloves, minced
2 1/2 tbsp corn starch

First, measure out the broth, soy sauce, sesame oil, and brown sugar and add them all to a mixing bowl.

Next, quarter your onion and mince the garlic. Put the onion in your slow cooker, and the minced garlic in the bowl.

Now it's time to cut the meat. The original recipe calls for it cut first, but doing it after cutting the vegetables, means one less wash for your cutting board - unless of course you don't mind cutting up produce on a board soaking in cow blood, then by all means. Add it to the slow cooker when you're done.

Whisk together everything in your bowl and pour it on top of your meat and onions.

Set the slow cooker to low and let it chill for 3.5 hours.

After you've washed your car, gotten the mail, folded some laundry, talked to your mom on the phone, or played Farmville for several hours, scoop out about a 1/4 cup of the broth and mix in your corn starch, add it back to the pot. I added the broccoli right on top, so it would keep it's bright color. (I also had it thawing in a colander for about thirty minutes.)

Once, that's all in the slow cooker, cover it up, and crank it up to high. 45 minutes and the broccoli is heated through and just starting to go tender.  

Last night we had it over pasta, but there were some leftovers I'll take for lunch and I plan to make some rice for that. I'd say this serves about six, we both went back for seconds, and there should be enough for two lunches.

The only thing I would do different, and Jonathan agrees, would be adding mushrooms. Though, I'll have to experiment with putting them in for the whole time, or adding them at the end like the broccoli.