Baby Sweetcorn, Mushroom, and Bamboo Shoot Stir-Fry

The ingredients are: baby sweetcorn, bamboo shoots, mushroom, red and green chillies, garlic, ginger, spring onion, red pepper, cabbage, sweet chilli sauce. All stir-fried in some left over beef fat.

Chop all the vegetables into pieces while the beef fat is heating in the wok.

Decant into a pyrex bowl, and add a little vinegar, sweet chilli sauce, and some chinese rice wine. Stir, and allow to stand for a few minutes.

The point of using the beef fat is twofold - the avoidance of waste, and to impart flavour to the stir-fry. You can cook this dish with sunflower oil instead, but you won't get the same flavour. Spoon the vegetables into the hot fat, and stir-fry at a medium to high heat for seven minutes, stirring frequently.

Afterwards, the stir-fried vegetables were decanted  into a metal seive, and drained for two minutes into a bowl, shaking every ten seconds or so. That way ninety percent of the beef fat is gone from the dish after cooking.

Beef and Green Pepper Chilli

The ground or minced beef had 20% fat content. This is good for cooking, but it is better that most of it is removed after the cooking process. 

The beef was browned in a little sunflower oil for about half an hour. During that time I cut green and yellow peppers into thin strips, and then diced the strips. I also sliced eight white mushrooms, four or five green finger chillies, garlic, and chopped up an onion. Other vegetables can be used instead, or in addition. I did not add red kidney beans to the chilli, just for a change. I love them, but they aren't necessary for a good chilli dish. 

When the ground beef was properly browned, I added the vegetables to the pot, and stirred them into the beef for about ten minutes at a moderate heat. After that I added some freshly boiled water, and added a tin of chopped tomatoes and some beef stock. The mix was stirred together for a few minutes, then I turned down the heat to let the mixture simmer, with a glass lid on the pot.

The chilli was ready after an hour of intermittent stirring, but the beef is more tender if it is allowed to simmer slowly for another hour, as in this case. By this time most of the chopped peppers have dissolved, but their characteristic flavour remains.  

I decanted the chilli into a tall jar once it had mostly cooled. The fat in the chilli rises to the top, and once it is cold, it can be scooped off the top with a spoon. So now the chilli contains lean beef :-). This way of preparing the dish with high fat ground beef requires that you prepare it the day before it will be reheated and served. 

The Green Beans were prepared in boiling water (fifteen minutes of simmer), with a little salt. 

Beef and Green Pepper Chilli