Beef in Black Bean Sauce

Another takeaway classic. The black turtle beans I used for this had a great flavour of their own which I felt I’d missed out on a bit until I made my own sauce. In hindsight they could have done with some overnight soaking in water, but that was simply remedied by adding more water and reducing the sauce again occasionally to cook them for longer and leaving the finished sauce in a container for about 10 hours before I used it in the dish.

Ingredients
75g Black Beans
2.5cm chunk of Fresh Ginger
2 cloves Garlic
1 tbsp Groundnut Oil
2 tbsp Sesame Oil
1 tbsp Mirin
150 ml Chicken Stock
3 tbsp Dark Soy Sauce
1 tsp Sugar
1 tsp Cornflour

For starters the beans need to be roughly chopped (that’s a food processor job), the garlic crushed and the ginger minced. Then heat the groundnut and sesame oil together in a pan and throw them in to fry on a high heat for about a minute.

Then add the rest of the ingredients minus the cornflour and cook for 2 or 3 minutes, or until the beans are tender.

Finally mix the cornflour with about a tiny bit of water and add it to thicken the sauce. That’s the sauce done!

I think there are few meats better suited to black bean sauce than beef. So I cut some steak up into strips and fried it in a little groundnut oil just to seal it before adding some green peppers and mushrooms.

Then in goes the sauce and I left everything to simmer gently whilst I prepared the rest of the meal.

I served it up with some plain rice to soak up the sauce and some steamed broccoli.

Delicious way to make use of these tasty beans.