Japanese Sesame Beef

Like ginger? Like garlic? Like sesame?

Like, where’s the beef?

Here is the beef; this is the Japanese recipe for you!

You’ll like how easy this dinner is to cook.
You’ll like how satisfied your tummy is when you finish eating.
And your family or guests will like you.

Your children
and their childrens’ children (your grand-children, too)
will want to be a great cook,

just like you.

Pan-Fried Beef with Vegetables

Gyuniku Gomayaki
serves 4
page 457

• 5 Tablespoons white sesame seeds, toasted
• 2 1/2 Tablespoons shoyu
• 2 Tablespoons sake
• 2 Tablespoons mirin
• 1 Tablespoon honey
• 3 cloves garlic, grated
• 1 teaspoon grated ginger
• 1/4 teaspoon paprika
• 1 Tablespoon sesame oil
• 1 pound beef sirloin, cut across the grain into 16 to 20 slices

In a suribachi (or other mortar), grind the sesame seeds until they are rougghly broken. Mix in the shoyu, sake, mirin, oney, garlic, ginger, paprika, and sesame oil. Marinate the beef for 15 to 20 minutes.
Remove the beef from the marinade, leaving the sesame seeds that stick to the meat. Divide into four portions. Discard remaining marinade.

• 8 fresh shiitake mushrooms, or button mushrooms, rinsed and stemmed
• 2 medium onions, cut into disks
• 8 spears of asparagus, cut in half lengthwise
• 10 ounces of soybean or mung-bean sprouts, rinsed and drained well
• salt
• 2 to 3 Tablespoons vegetable oil

Heat a wok over medium heat. Coat the bottom with some oil. When the oil is hot, add the beef a little at a time. As it starts to cook, push it up away from the center of the wok and add more beef. Add more oil if needed. The beef will continue cooking when it’s around the top of the wok, but more slowly because it is farther from the hot-spot in the center of the wok. When all the beef has been pushed up, add the onions, mushrooms, and asparagus into the center of the wok. Lightly salt the vegetables. If the vegetables look like they will stick and burn, add a spoonful of water rather than oil. Just before everything is cooked, add the bean sprouts on top of the vegetables. Cover the wok for a few minutes to let the sprouts steam. Serve hot with plain white rice.

My cooking notes: To save even more time, I bought a package of thinly sliced beef from the Korean grocery near my house. It’s intended for shabu shabu or sukiyaki, so it’s very thin. It cooks much faster so I have modified the cooking instructions above accordingly. When I first made this recipe I partially thawed some sirloin and cut it very thinly as well. Ms. Shimbo has the cook cut one pound of steak into 15 to 20 slices, but I didn’t read the recipe through thoroughly. She cooks the meat in half a skillet, and the vegetables in the other half, finishing at the same time. The instructions in her book are not very clear in this recipe; perhaps she means to cook one serving at a time? I don’t have a big enough stove for a skillet so large for four servings! I am posting my instructions for using a wok to cook the food. And she does not say what to do with the bean sprouts. In many of her other recipes, she has the cook blanch the sprouts, especially the larger soy-bean sprouts. They have a very “raw” taste if they aren’t lightly cooked. I added the sprouts near the end of cooking and covered the wok for a few minutes so the sprouts were still crispy but not raw.

More Japanese Stir-Fry Recipes From Tess

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