Beef and long beans in sweet flour sauce

Sweet flour sauce (甜面酱) is an richly flavorful sauce of fermented flour. It's not just sweet, but also very salty and sticky. Some use it for Peking duck. It's good with beef. Because of the strong flavor and the thick flour and oil contents in this sauce, when using this sauce in stir-fry, I do not marinate the beef at all. The sauce is added very early in the cooking process to coat the beef and create a tender texture.


Recipe: Beef and long beans in sweet flour sauce (for 2-3)


Ingredients:
- 4 oz thinly very sliced lean beef, cut to 1" small pieces
- 1 lb long beans, washed and cut to 3" long
- 2 tablespoons (TB) sweet flour sauce
- dash of hot chili powder
- 1 cup meat stock


Procedure:
1. Boil long beans in water sufficient to cover all the beans, for 10 minutes to remove toxins. Drain water.
2. Mix beef with chili powder. Heat up a non-stick pan on med-high to high heat. Add beef and let sizzle for a few seconds. Once the beef starts giving out a little water, add the sweet flour sauce to pan. First, let the sauce heat up and soften in its own oil. Mix in with the beef gradually. Keep the mixture in a paste form as the beef cooks. Add small amount of meat stock to dilute the paste whenever it seems to thicken rapidly. When the beef is cooked and nicely coated with the sauce (about 30 seconds), take out the beef. Add stock into the remaining sauce in the pan and dilute it into a gravy. Let boil and thicken a little. Then add in the long beans, stir to coat with the gravy. Finally mix in the beef and serve right away. The cooking time in step 2 (this step) is very short, about 6 minutes. Great care is needed handling the sauce in the hot pan.