Double Take: Stir-fried Broccoli

We are making our rounds through the sections, and today's recipe comes from the "Side Dishes" section. Five recipes down, 1245+ to go!

The goal this week was to pick out a side dish that would come together easily and be enjoyed by all. We'd originally picked out a mashed potato recipe, but at the last minute we noticed that the recipe called for red potatoes, which aren't quite in season yet. So look for that recipe later this spring (or next year). Broccoli is available year round, so Tabitha picked out "Stir-fried Broccoli."



This dish does come together quite quickly. For once I didn't think the book underestimated the prep time of 10 minutes. And I prepped more than the recipe called for!

Start with about a pound of broccoli (either a bag of precut florets or chop up about one pound of broccoli crowns). Add some oil to the pan, heat thoroughly and add some sliced ginger to the pan. Let the ginger infuse into the oil, then add the broccoli and stir-fry for a couple minutes. Easy peasy. Sprinkle with a tiny bit of salt and sugar, and a bit of chicken broth, cover the pan and let cook two minutes longer. Drizzle with sesame oil and sprinkle with sesame seeds. That's it. You're done.

But my broccoli was overcooked. And the recipe called for WAY too much oil. The recipe called for a total of four tablespoons of oil. Granted, the recipe "serves six," but I always like to double my veggie portion instead of my meat, so that would make it a whopping 20 grams of fat in my vegetable. Holy Shnikes, Batman! I like tasty veggies and all, but if I'm going to ingest 20 grams of fat with my veggie, that fat had better come from something tasty like cheese rather than something with no taste like vegetable oil.

I also had a few issues with the instructions. The recipe gives you no indication as to how to serve the broccoli. Do I remove the ginger? If I'm just slicing it instead of chopping it, you'd think the ginger shouldn't be served with the final dish, but nothing's mentioned. Also, what about the chicken broth? With the lid on, the chicken broth isn't going to reduce, so if you serve the dish as it, you have broccoli swimming in hot chicken broth, which also means the already overcooked broccoli is still cooking.

So, the verdict. The color was beautiful! Such a gorgeous deep shade of green. I hope your monitor and my camera are able to do this color justice. But the recipe as written gets no votes. I like the idea behind the recipe, but that's where it ends. Salt is not needed because the recipe calls for chicken bouillon. I dislike making a vegetarian recipe not vegetarian, so I'll use vegetable broth in the future. And reduce the liquid by half. And reduce the wet cooking time by half. And not cover the pan during the wet cooking time. And just drizzle a little bit of sesame oil instead of a whole tablespoon. And reduce the sauté oil by at least half.

Make Again Severely Reducing Everything But the Broccoli and Ginger: 1 vote
I Never Tried It B/c I Don't Like the Smell of Sesame Oil: 1 vote

But you don't have to be satisfied with only 2 votes (and one actual tester), head on over to Double the Garlic to check out Tabitha's take on Stir-fried Broccoli!

A sneak peak of Sunday's post: Chicken Cordon Bleu

I have also realized that I really should be giving you the page numbers of these recipes because the index isn't the most user friendly (they really tried though... there are two, but with 1250+ recipes, it's difficult to make a great index). Can you tell I'm trying to avoid the plural of index yet? So, find Stir-fried Broccoli on page 458 of the All-New Ultimate Southern Living Cookbook!