Quick and Easy Beef and Cashew Nut Stir Fry Recipe

Whenever we are looking for a quick and easy recipe, Chinese stir frying is always worthy of consideration. The Chinese style of cooking centres around simply prepared ingredients, cooked very quickly at incredibly high temperatures, meaning that both preparation time and cooking time are kept to a minimum. This means that many delicious recipes can be prepared and cooked even when time may seem to be at a premium. This incredibly simple beef and cashew nut dish is just one such recipe and is served with plain fried rice.

All of the ingredients on this page relate to a serving for one person. It is important to remember when stir frying not to try to cook too much at the same time. This affects the heat levels in the Wok and ultimately the quality of the finished dish.

Stir Fry Ingredients

6oz frying steak

1 small white onion

6 small button bushrooms

2 tsp cashew nuts

Dark Soy Sauce

Black pepper

Sunflower or sesame seed oil for stir frying

Preparing the Rice

It is important to know that prior to making fried rice, the rice first of all has to be cooked by boiling it and subsequently cooled. This is the first matter which has to be attended to when preparing this dish. 3oz basmati rice should be placed in a sieve and washed under cold running water to remove excess starch. It should then be added to boiling, salted water and simmered for ten minutes. Stirring once about a minute in to the simmering process helps prevent the rice from sticking together.

When the rice is ready, it can be drained through a sieve, spread out thinly on a plate, covered with kitchen towel and allowed to cool in this fashion. As the whole idea of this dish is preparing a quick and easy recipe, however, running the cooked rice briefly under more cold water and sitting it in the sieve to drain while the beef and cashew nut stir fry is prepared serves the required purpose.

NB!! For very important food safety reasons, cooked rice should never be left at room temperature for more than about an hour, whether covered or not. If the rice is perhaps being boiled a few hours in advance, it should be cooled and then refrigerated until required.

The Chinese method of stir frying is not only a quick and easy method of cooking, it is also a very healthy method of cooking. This is because the food is cooked quickly, at incredibly high temperatures, and its nutritional value is not lost in a long, drawn out process. Stir frying is used to cook everything from beef, to chicken, to fish and seafood, as well as a great many vegetarian and vegan dishes.

The book featured tio the right considers a variety of Chinese stir fry recipes, to be cooked quickly, easily and healthily at home.

The onion should be peeled and quartered and the steak cut it in to strips, about half an inch in width. A Wok should then be brought up to a very high heat before about a tablespoonful of oil is added. When the oil is hot, the beef only should be added and stir fried on full heat for about a minute. It should then carefully be removed to a dish, while the onion, mushrooms and cashew nuts are thereafter added and also cooked for around a minute.

The steak should then be re-added to the Wok, along with the soy sauce and stir frying should continue for around another thirty seconds.

The stir fry can then be removed to a serving dish and kept warm while the rice is fried. If desired, a small amount of fresh herb such as basil can be stirred through the food once it has been removed from the heat.

The Wok should be carefully wiped with some clean kitchen towel before it is brought back up to heat and another tablespoon of oil added. The rice should then be stir fried for a couple of minutes, before it is packed in to a small bowl lined with clingfilm. The serving plate can then be placed atop this dish and the two inverted. The small bowl can then be lifted away, the clingfilm peeled off and the beef and cashew nut stir fry arranged around the rice on the plate