The Best Cut Of Meat For Pepper Steak

When you want steak on the menu but you've had enough of the simple grilled or pan-fried whole cuts, you might be thinking of incorporating a little more veg directly in the dish. If this describes you, pepper steak might just be your new go-to home meal. If you're unfamiliar, pepper steak is generally considered to be a Chinese-American or Chinese-inspired dish, although it has roots in Fujian Chinese cuisine. Pepper steak consists of thinly cut strips of beef stir-fried with bell peppers, usually garlic and ginger, soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and a sugar component. But when it comes to the most important ingredient, what's the best meat to use? Skirt steak makes an excellent choice for pepper steak stir-fry.

Skirt steak is nice and lean with a light marbling and cooks up deliciously tender, especially when cut into thin strips. It's great at picking up the flavor of whatever it cooks with and will still come out nice and juicy in a stir-fry. Incidentally, skirt steak is also the inexpensive cut of steak Bobby Flay prefers for feeding a crowd. Although Flay would be more likely to use it in something like steak tacos with stone fruit salsa, you can very easily feed a crowd with a pepper steak stir-fry. It's a quick, simple, hot meal that can be ready in about 30 minutes and is easy to tweak to your specific tastes. So, what do you need to know to make this dish?

First of all, when prepping your steak, be sure to cut against the grain so each bite will come out deliciously tender. A simple pepper steak sauce consists of soy sauce, rice wine vinegar, and sugar. If you want a thicker sauce, you can whisk in a pinch of cornstarch to make it nice and creamy. No pepper steak recipe would be quite right without sliced bell peppers, but you can add onions, mushrooms, bamboo shoots, or almost any other stir-fry veg. From there, you'll want some aromatics — garlic is a must, but ginger, shallots, and chives make great additions.

And, of course, there's an order of operations when dealing with your stir-fry ingredients. You'll need to saute the meat first and set it aside. Then cook the aromatics and veggies and add the beef back in. From there, simply mix in the sauce to a light simmer until it's sufficiently thick and has a nice sheen. It's a fast meal that's hearty and delicious — salty and sweet with plenty of umami flavor from the skirt steak. For more of a spicy kick, you can add chiles or a healthy spoonful of black pepper to the mix. 

If skirt steak isn't available, flank steak makes a good substitution, and the cook will turn out pretty much the same, although skirt steak is slightly more marbled and juicy. And for a more economical option, you can sub in sirloin — it just won't be quite as tender. But whatever meat you use, you can have a wonderfully complex pepper steak made exactly to your specifications in under an hour.