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I've read up on a fair few recipes for Chinese crispy beef, but they all call for a beef steak to be sliced up, such as topside, rump, sirloin. But I cannot find any info or recipes on substituting slicing a steak with using minced beef instead.

I presume this is because minced beef is much smaller and won't be "bite-sized", but I've had similar very small sized crispy beef in a Chinese restaurant before and it was fine.

So would it work out ok using packet bought minced beef covered in cornflour and fried?
Or would something not work, such as the beef wouldn't go crispy etc?

James
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    Most likely, it will disintegrate in to small minced beef particles. It would definitely go crispy, perhaps more, and more easily than you would like. But I'm far from an expert in these matters, so I'll leave it to someone more qualified and/or capable ;) – Willem van Rumpt Sep 09 '15 at 16:27
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    @WillemvanRumpt Yeah "disintegrate" was my concern too. I'm not a "noob" at cooking so thought I could avoid that by frying small batches and not moving around until they've browned a bit. But I also don't know, and don't want to dish up to the family "Soy sauce flavoured dust" – James Sep 09 '15 at 16:30
  • Hehehe. Maybe with a good coating, it might work. But I would say it needs to be one hell of a sturdy coating. And I wouldn't shy away from eating deep fried minced meat and coating particles any way :) – Willem van Rumpt Sep 09 '15 at 16:36
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    @WillemvanRumpt Actually, you've given me a nudge to try this anyway. If it breaks down too much, I can just mix it with the fried rice I was going to do with it, like a special fried rice thing. That might work out actually, thanks :) (I'd still like an answer though, if anyone has info or tried before). – James Sep 09 '15 at 16:38

2 Answers2

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Try browning the ground beef first in a pan (no oil). Dump out on paper towels to absorb the grease. Use onions and other aromatic vegetables at this step if you like, too.

Then stir fry the other ingredients, and add the beef to the stir-fry towards the very end of cooking.

Have you ever browned hamburger meat (or whatever texture is the minced meat you speak of)? Ask yourself how stir frying is any different than that. At worst, incompatible ingredients (whether temperature, duration, vigor) are fried in different batches and then combined at the end. You can often optimize by adding ingredients at different stages, such as putting the garlic in last so it doesn't burn and browning meat first so it doesn't burn everything else.

For an Asian stir-fry dish, you don't want to fry in the oil made by the beef, but change it out for cooking oil anyway, or if high temperatures are involved, peanut oil that won't smoke.

JDługosz
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What kind of frying does the recipe call for? Stir-fry? Deep-fry? Anyway, your best bet when trying to make something crispy is to dip it in tempura and then deep fry it, but stir-frying on a high heat will probably give good results as well. Substituting sliced-steak for minced meat will change the texture, but you can try to avoid disintegration by combining egg and breadcrumbs (or flour, if breadcrumbs are not available) into the meat mixture, which will make it more sturdy.

Yaron Idan
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