Elevate Your Stir-Fry Game with Asian Style Beef Curry

Sharing is caring!

Spice up your dinner routine with this delicious Asian Style Beef Curry Stir-Fry!  It’s the perfect blend of flavors, textures, and spice and easy to make.

 

This dish is a delicious attempt at a fake out food.  We order Chinese food often.  One of the many dishes we enjoy is curry beef.  It’s oh so good with the vegetables, the hearty beef, the curry flavor.  Yum!  Yet, we all know that ordering in is not the best, most healthy options to choose from.

 

What’s a food blogger to do?  Recreate this dish at home but HEALTHIER!  First, by lowering the amount of salt and fat in the recipe I can make it more flavorful and better for my family.  Then I amp up the curry flavor using my own blend and kick it up with some heat and some chiles.  And, finally, the piece de la resistance!  Lean eye of round steak!

 

What is Asian curry?

 

Asian curry is different from Indian curry.  While the taste may seem the same to some, the ingredients aren’t exactly the same.  Asian curry relies heavily on curry powder whereas Indian curry has a broader array of spices and typically has a masala spice blend.  This masala can be completely different based on region, village, and even family.  I have my own garam masala blend I created for my recipes.

 

 

There’s even a difference between Chinese, Japanese, and Thai curries that are completely different than Indian curry.  Chinese curry tends to be thinner than all of them.  Japanese is thicker due to the cornstarch slurry added to thicken the sauce.  Thai curry has multiple colors of curry based on the ingredients in there.  You can read about the different Thai curries as part of this Thai meatball recipe.

 

There’s also African and Caribbean curries.  African curries have different ingredients like mustard seed, paprika, and cacao in there.  Caribbean curry has more heat from the use of fresh scotch bonnet peppers. 

 

Why are stir-fry recipes great for dinner?

 

For me, stir-fry recipes mean quick and easy dinners.  I get home and start the rice in the rice cooker.  Then I prepare the ingredients.  I chop veggies and meats.  Sometimes I use frozen peppers and onions which just require some thawing.  And sometimes I use canned ingredients like water chestnuts and baby corn.  If you’re looking forward to chopping all those veggies, hit the salad bar.  And sometimes they have prechopped veggies in the produce section of the grocery store, too.

 

 

Since stir-fry recipes have quick cooking times, that means that the ingredients keep their vibrant colors and have a crispy cooked texture.  This means dinner will be brightly colored and look delicious on the plate.  Stir-fry recipes usually have more nutrition in them because the ingredients are quick cooked keeping most if not all of their vitamins and minerals in them.

 

Finally, I love stir-fry recipes because they are completely customizable.  You don’t have to keep them to just Asian flavors.  I’ve made an array of stir-fry recipes with different cuisines as the base.  Tex-Mex is probably my next favorite style of stir-fry.  I’ve also made chicken Kiev style stir-fry, a Cajun stir-fry, and finally a fun breakfast stir-fry!  I always say that stir-fry is just a cooking method like braising or baking.  Change up the ingredients to make something fun for your family.

 

 

Ingredients for this Asian style beef curry stir-fry

 

Most of these ingredients are pantry staples.  At least they are for us.  If you don’t usually make a traditional style stir-fry, then you might need to purchase a few items.  And if you don’t make curry like I do, then you might need to purchase some of those ingredients, too.  But it’s well worth the investment because your family will love it and ask for it repeatedly.

 

Fridge – steak, ginger, celery, carrot, bell pepper

Pantry – low sodium tamari soy sauce (or regular soy sauce), cornstarch, curry powder, garam masala, chicken broth, garlic, brown rice (or long grain white rice)

 

A word on the soy sauce.  Tamari soy sauce is gluten-free.  But that’s not why I use it.  I prefer the flavor of the tamari soy sauce over regular soy sauce.  It has a richer and deeper umami flavor that I love in all my Asian stir-fry recipes. 

 

 

Perfecting the Spice Level

 

I didn’t make my Asian beef curry stir-fry too spicy.  If you wanted to kick it up, you could add more cayenne along with the curry powder.  Or if you can find a hot curry powder that would work, too.  Finally, you can adjust the heat by adding in fresh chiles to the rest of the vegetables.  I’ve often put some jalapeno or serrano peppers in my stir-fry recipes to kick them up a bit and add some heat.

 

Instructions for making this Asian style beef curry stir-fry recipe

 

The key to a good stir-fry is a super hot pan and a wok if you have it.  If not, make sure to use a large skillet to give everything room to spread out and cook.  I start with marinating the thinly sliced steak in the tamari soy sauce, 1 tablespoon of curry powder, and 1 tablespoon of the cornstarch.  Adding cornstarch to the marinade, called velveting, gives the meat a nice coating that gets crispy on the outside and keeps it tender on the inside. 

 

 

Funny story about this.  This is how I was taught to marinate meat for all Asian stir-fry recipes.  One recipe I made had peanut butter in the sauce.  The hubs says to me, “You always add peanut butter to these recipes.  Why are you adding more?”  “Um, what do you mean?”  He points to the boil marinating and says I added some to that bowl.  “No.  That’s just cornstarch and soy sauce.”  “Oh.”  It does look sort of like peanut butter but it doesn’t taste like it.

 

Next, combine the broth with the remaining cornstarch and curry powder.  Then stir in the garam masala and set aside while you start cooking the vegetables.  Heat your skillet over high heat.  Higher than you’re probably used to, but that’s the key to a good stir-fry recipe.  I used cooking spray, but you can use oil if you like.  Go for one with high smoking point. Canola or even peanut or sunflower would work well. 

 

 

Briefly sauté the garlic and ginger before stirring in the onions, celery, and carrots.  These usually take the longest to cook so add them first.  Next, add the peppers and cook until the vegetables are crisp tender.  They should have a little crunch but not a lot.  Remove them to a plate and spray the pan again before adding in the beef to cook.  Stir constantly while it cooks so it doesn’t stick and browns evenly on all sides.

 

Add the vegetables back to the pan along with the broth mixture.  Bring it to a boil and then reduce the heat to simmer until the sauce thickens.  Stir the mixture occasionally so it thickens evenly and doesn’t stick to the pan.  When the sauce is thick enough for you, serve the stir-fry over some brown rice, white rice, or even noodles if you want.  Serve it with some kimchi, pickled vegetables, or a simple cucumber salad. These add a burst of contrasting flavors and textures to your beef stir-fry.

 

 

Just look at how colorful that is!  All those vegetables and all that curry flavor; you just know this dish will blow your taste buds away.  You WILL NOT wish you had ordered in.  Save the paper containers, the little packets of sauces, and those splintered chop sticks!  Make this fake out recipe for your family when they’re craving some Asian take-out.  Serve this bad boy up with some hearty brown rice and you’ve got a HEALTHY fake out meal at home.

 

This tastes AH-mazing!  It’s oh so flavorful!  Because of this, never again will I order that *coughOTHERcough* curry recipe from the take out again.  Now, I just need to work on some healthier egg rolls, recreate the pu pu platter, and I’m golden!  Anyone have a healthy crab rangoon recipe?