Why is the beef in my stir fry chewy, and how do I velvet it?

Chinese restaurant beef is tender because two separate things were done to it before it ever met the wok. Neither is difficult and neither takes long, but skipping either one leaves you with grey, chewy strips no matter how hot your hob gets.

What you'll need

• Beef, chicken or pork, sliced thin
• Cornflour
• Soy sauce, rice wine or water, and oil
• Optionally egg white or a small pinch of bicarbonate of soda

Step by step

1. Find the grain and cut across it.Look at the surface of the meat for the direction the fibres run. Cut at right angles to them, so each slice is a short cross-section of many fibres rather than a long bundle of intact ones. This shortens every fibre to the thickness of your slice and is the single biggest factor in perceived tenderness. Firm the meat in the freezer for 20 minutes first and it slices far thinner.
2. Slice thinner than feels right.Two to three millimetres. Stir-frying is a very short cook, so thickness is time. Thick pieces either stay raw inside or overcook outside while you wait for them.
3. Make the velveting slurry.Per 300g of meat: roughly a tablespoon of cornflour, a tablespoon of soy sauce or water, a teaspoon of oil, and optionally one egg white. Mix it into the meat with your hands until every piece is coated in a thin slippery film and no liquid is left loose in the bowl.
4. Use bicarbonate of soda only in small amounts, and rinse.A quarter of a teaspoon per 300g of beef, worked in and left 20–30 minutes, raises the surface pH and stops the proteins binding as tightly, which is what gives restaurant beef its slippery texture. More than that tastes soapy and turns the surface mushy. Rinse it off and pat dry before adding the cornflour coating.
5. Rest it for 20–30 minutes.The coating needs time to hydrate and grip. Longer is fine — several hours in the fridge does no harm. This is the step people skip when they are in a hurry, and it is doing real work.
6. Cook it separately, in batches, in a very hot pan.Get the pan properly hot, add oil, and add a single layer of meat with space around it. Leave it for 30–60 seconds before moving it. Domestic hobs cannot recover from a full pan of cold wet meat, and a crowded pan drops below boiling temperature and steams the meat grey. Two or three small batches beat one large one every time.
7. Take the meat out, cook the vegetables, put it back at the end.Meat back in for the last thirty seconds with the sauce. It will finish cooking in that time. Leaving it in the pan for the whole stir fry is why home stir-fried beef ends up overcooked as well as chewy.

Tips

• Cheap cuts work well here. Because you are cutting the fibres short and cooking briefly, braising steak, skirt and flank all velvet well — you do not need frying steak.
• The same technique works on chicken breast and pork loin, and is why restaurant chicken in a stir fry is so much softer than home chicken.
• A poaching version exists: drop the coated meat into barely simmering water or oil for 30 seconds until it turns opaque, drain, and stir fry it at the end. It gives the most reliably silky result.
• If your pan will never get properly hot, cook the meat in a separate frying pan on the highest ring while the vegetables go in the wok.

Common mistakes

• Cutting along the grain — Every strip is then a rope of full-length muscle fibres. No coating, marinade or heat control will make that tender.
• Tipping all the meat into the pan at once — The pan temperature collapses, the meat releases water, and it boils in it. Grey, tough and wet is the standard outcome.
• Using too much bicarbonate of soda — It works, but past a small dose it produces a soapy taste and an unpleasantly soft, almost slimy surface. A quarter teaspoon per 300g is the ceiling.

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