How to Make Beef Tender for Stir Fry (2024)

Learn how to easily get tender and juicy beef slices for all your stir-fries by slicing beef against the grain, marinating it, and the velveting process.

When it comes to stir-fries, tender beef can make or break a dish, so it's pretty important to know how to make it tender.

If you're looking for a walkthrough on how to make beef tender for stir-fries, then you're in the right place!

Luckily, it's quite easy to do and it's a 2 step process: Slice the beef against the grain, and make sure you always use cornstarch, water (to hydrate the meat), and oil in your beef marinade (velveting).

Don't worry, it's not difficult to do, and once you get the hang of slicing beef against the grain, it becomes muscle memory and you'll naturally always do it! It's a process that I use every time I need to slice beef and it works on any type of stir-fries like Beef Chow Fun, Stir-Fried Bitter Melon, Cantonese Beef Chow Mein, and my Beef Noodle Stir Fry!

Best Cut of Beef for Stir Fry

A common question everyone asks is, what cuts of beef do you use to make stir-fries?

When it comes to the type of beef I use for stir-fries, I'm not particular too picky about it and usually use what is available or on sale at the time.

The most common and popular beef cuts I use for stir-fries are:

• Flank Steak
• Chuck
• Outside Skirt Steak
• Top Sirloin Steak (or any type of steaks such as ribeye or t-bone)

How to Cut Meat Against the Grain

Slicing beef against the grain is really quite simple and it's a 2 step process.

Once you do it a few times, it'll be muscle memory and you'll always want to cut any type of meat this way to make it tender!

1. Find the Direction of the Grain - If you look closely, you will see that the meat strands go in a certain direction, this works for all types of meat (beef, pork, and chicken).

1. Cut Against It - Once you find the pattern of which way the grains are going, you want to slice the beef in the opposite direction (against it)

Sometimes, if you can't easily find which way the grain is going, you can like at the side profile of the meat, like in the photo below. For flank steaks (like the photo below), it is very easy to figure out the direction of the grain.

If you're wondering why cutting against the grain helps with keeping the beef tender and soft, it's because the strands of the meat are shorter on each beef slice, so when we chewy on the beef slices, they fall apart more easily in our mouth.

A beef with longer strands running through it makes it harder to break apart from chewing.

In the photo below, I sliced the beef in 2 different ways to show you the difference.

• The top slice is cut with the grain - the beef strands are longer, so you can't easily chew through the beef slices. When you cut it this way, it makes the beef slices a lot tougher to chew.
• The bottom slice is cut against the grain - see how short the meat strands are? Once you bite into this slice, it can easily be ripped apart which makes it very tender.

Simple Beef Marinade for Stir Fry

A simple beef marinade can do magic in stir-fries. Not only does marinating beef for stir-fries give it flavor, but it also keeps the beef moist through a mini brine of soy sauce and water. The water will actually get re-absorbed back into the meat which makes it harder to overcook.

This is my go-to marinade for all my beef stir-fries, for both noodles and beef and vegetable stir-fry.

It is a mixture of regular soy sauce, dark soy sauce (optional for color), water, oil, Shaoxing cooking wine (optional, or you can substitute it with dry sherry), toasted sesame seed oil, and corn starch.

Velveting Beef

Another method that is used in Chinese cooking for stir-fries is called velveting, which will take your beef stir fries to another level.

Velveting is basically a method that coats any type of meat slices (beef, pork, or chicken) in a thin layer of starch, and then quickly flash fried to bring out the gelatinous texture of cooked starch.

The thin gelatinous coating seals in the beef juices which keeps it moist and gives it a slippery mouth feel, hence the name velveting!

Velveting also works well with pork and chicken as well, especially with chicken breast. If you want to tender and soft chicken slices, that are also difficult to overcook for your hot pot gatherings, velveting is a must.

A lot of people also swear by adding an egg white to their velveting technique, but to be honest I never felt like it was necessary. It's more work without a lot of gains and if it's not done correctly, you will get gobs of egg white on your beef slices.

Traditional Method of Velveting Beef

Before you can use the beef you need to quickly cook the marinated beef in a lot of hot oil (enough oil to submerge all the beef in). Essentially you are doing a quick deep fry for a minute. You can also use water instead of hot oil but hot oil will usually produce a better result.

You want to only cook the beef to about 50% cooked. Once it's 50% cooked, you can remove it from the pan and set it aside until you are ready to use it. Don't worry, you will cook the beef the rest of the way when you are stir-frying it with your vegetables or noodles.

This method basically flash frys the layer of cornstarch and quickly cooks the starch to activate that slippery coating (hence the name velveting).

This method is slightly messier because you will need to drain and remove the oil once you are done velveting the beef.

Easier Method of Velveting Beef

This is the easier method and my preferred method.

Instead of using a lot of oil, I would use what I normally use for stir-frying and add 1-2 tablespoons more. The oil needs to be very hot for this method as well because you want to quickly cook it.

You will cook the beef at about 50% as well, and then remove it from the pan and set it aside until you're ready to cook it with the stir fry. You'll cook the beef until it's fully cooked with your stir fry, like the method above.

The main difference between the two methods is the amount of oil. The traditional method uses enough oil to submerge all the beef so that each piece of beef is suspended in a hot cooking liquid to quickly seal the corn starch onto the beef evenly to make that slippery layer.

The quick method doesn't use as much oil, so the starch on the beef will not evenly cook and some of the starch may stick to the pan as well, so you will lose some of it on the pan. It still creates a nice and tender beef for stir fry and you won't need to drain the excess oil so it's more suitable for cooking at home.

How to Tenderize Meat with Baking Soda

Whenever you get stir-fries in any Chinese restaurant, you'll notice how incredibly soft the beef is. That's because they use baking soda as a tenderizer.

If you want to geek out on how baking soda makes the meat tender, it's because it raises the pH of the meat so that it's difficult for the protein molecules to bond to each other while it's cooking, so it keeps it tender.

I personally don't like my beef *that* soft and you'll notice that it also takes away the 'beefy' flavor of beef so I don't like to use baking soda as a method of tenderizing my beef.

If you do decide to use baking soda as a tenderizer, you should do it before you marinate your beef. Mix about ¾ teaspoon of baking soda with 2 tablespoons of water and mix it in with your sliced beef and let it sit for about 30 minutes.

Once the beef has mingled with the baking soda, you must remember to rinse off the baking soda before you cook it or it will make your beef smell fishy and it will taste weird.

Once you rinse it off, you will have to re-season or marinate the beef before you stir fry it.

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