Let's try this again (crispy beef)

corblimey

Last weekend, I followed this recipe and while it's well tasty, it is in no way crispy. It's only after I'd finished cooking that I noticed the large amount of cooking oil, and realised IO should've basically deep fried the beef instead of only shallow frying it. So there's that; I'll know for next time.

But for this time, I've got 2 portions defrosting right now for this evening's dinner. Rather than dumping it in the microwave, can I re-fry it safely to get the crispiness level increased? Would I need to re-roll it in cornflour first? Is there any way of getting already fried meat up nice and crispy? (I wouldn't normally ask, but I've heard of twice-fried chips and the like, but I suspect meat might react differently to potato).

Any tips? Or just not worth the effort/risk of ruining the food?

The Hill Billy

I will leave this open so that responses to your non-safety queries can be posted.

tHB

corblimey

Mea culpa, didn't mean 're-heat safely' in the 'will I die' sense, more in the 'can I do it without ruining the flavour'. Since my op, I've looked around, and re-heating steak in a pan is a bit of a kerfuffle, and seems a little fraught if not done correctly, so I'm just going to leave it. It's moot now anyway, had it with a big ol bowl of rice and it was great, so I'll keep the deep fry method for next time.

On a related note, the recipe calls for 100ml of oil to cook in, but surely it would depend on the size and depth of your pan, so I'm assuming "just enough oil to cover the meat in one layer on the bottom of the pan"? Would I be right?

rubadub

corblimey wrote: »

On a related note, the recipe calls for 100ml of oil to cook in, but surely it would depend on the size and depth of your pan, so I'm assuming "just enough oil to cover the meat in one layer on the bottom of the pan"?

It does matter. A higher volume of oil will contain more heat energy too, e.g. if you drop 1 small bit of meat into a litre of hot oil it has little effect on the temp, dump 1kg of meat into 100ml of oil and its cooled down the oil a lot and so can go soggy.

My trick is to heat oil in a thick base saucepan and tilt it to one side, so not its deep in one "corner", then I drop a few things into there and they get deep fried. When doing coated chicken like this beef I do a few at a time and put them on plates to once side. If cooking for many people it can be a pain. The thick base in my pan also retains a lot of heat so if the food cools down the oil its quickly heated back up by the hot bottom, even if its not sitting on the hob due to my tilting.



You can also get mini deep friers which need very little oil to get a decent level of oil, this means they also heat up faster.

vibe666

the secret to proper chinese takeaway style 'crispy' beef is (as i found out recently) actually powered/icing sugar with cornflour, so it's the sugar that gives it that snap, not the cornflour, although you can still get it pretty crispy without the sugar element ala my cooking club recipe from 2011, if you want to use that as a guide.

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056467624

i didn't find out about the sugar until after i posted that recipe, but it should give you an idea of where to go with it to make it nice and crispy, but tenderising with a meat mallet will help too, creating lots of surface area for the oil to get into and to crisp up.

the wok for semi-deep frying is also a good trick if you don't have a proper deep fryer as with the sloped edge you don't need nearly as much oil and they're great for proving a lot of hot surface area directly to your food and (gently) tossing it around in to get it all cooked evenly.