Dinner
Beef and vegetable stir-fry
Iron-rich dinner in twenty minutes, for a growth spurt or a heavy training week.
- Servings
- 4
- Total
- 20 min
- Skill
- Easy
What you need
Ingredients
Making for
4 servings
- Flank or sirloin steak0.25 lb
- Jasmine rice (dry)0.25 cup
- Broccoli0.5 cup
- Bell pepper0.25 each
- Low-sodium soy sauce0.5 tbsp
- Toasted sesame oil0.25 tsp
- Garlic cloves0.5 each
Quantities scale linearly with servings. Round to the nearest practical amount when shopping.
Steps
- 1
Slice the beef across the grain, thin
1 lb of flank or sirloin, sliced against the grain into strips about an eighth of an inch. Cutting with the grain gives you chewy beef whatever you do next, and this is the step that decides the whole dish.
- 2
Pan screaming hot, beef in one layer, do not stir
High heat, 1 tbsp oil, beef in a single layer. Leave it 90 seconds to sear before touching it. Crowded or stirred it steams grey instead of browning, and stir-fry is mostly about that crust.
1:30
- 3
Beef out, vegetables in
Take the beef out while it is still slightly pink. Then 2 cups of broccoli and a sliced bell pepper into the same pan for 3 minutes, with 2 cloves of garlic in the last 30 seconds so it does not burn.
3:00
- 4
Beef back in, sauce, thirty seconds
Beef returns, 2 tbsp low-sodium soy sauce and 1 tsp sesame oil, tossed for half a minute. The beef finishes on residual heat, which is why it stays tender.
Coach's notes
- Red meat is a genuinely useful iron source for a growing athlete, and iron matters more for endurance than most parents realise.
- Serve over the jasmine rice or the whole-grain pasta already in the plan.
- Freezing the beef for 20 minutes before slicing makes thin cuts far easier.
- Sesame oil goes in with the heat off. Heated hard it turns bitter.