..: Teriyaki Beef and Broccoli over Brown Rice

Oh fungus, how you love to sneak up on me when I least expect it! I was beyond excited to make tonight's dinner. My mouth had been watering for days in anticipation, so you can only imagine my disappointment when I opened the bag of broccoli and found that it had started to look more like a biology lab petri dish! I had to modify what we were having for dinner tonight, but I still wanted to give all of you the original recipe with directions! All of the pictures are here (sans the broccoli), but we ended up having french cut green beans with our meal instead. I hope that the blanching technique I discuss with the broccoli prep helps some of you out! Blanching is a great way to cook your veggies, but also keeps their bright healthy color, and also helps keep some of their crunchy texture so they don't taste like mush! You can use this technique with lots of veggies!

To Prepare the Beef
1. Heat a few tablespoons of olive oil in a frying pan over medium heat.
2. One the oil is hot, add 3/4 pounds of lean beef. I like to use the strip cut london broil. Most grocery stores now label this as "stir fry" meat directly on the packaging. If you don't want to use this, stew meat (the cubed stuff) works great too!

3. Continue to cook the meat over medium heat while you start preparing your broccoli!

To Prepare the Broccoli
1. Bring a large pot of water to boil.
2. While you are waiting for the water to boil, cut 1 pound of broccoli stems down to a length that you like (cut them close to the broccoli flower if you don't like stems, or cut them farther down the stem if you like eating the stems). Remember, YOU are the one eating, so make it to YOUR liking! Also make sure you remove any rouge leaves from the stems and flowers!
3. Make a large bowl of ice water, and set it aside.
4. You are going to boil the broccoli for just a minute or two (depending on how much you are cooking).
5. Once the broccoli has cooked for a minute, drain it and put it in the ice water. This whole process is called blanching. One of the many reasons people do not like broccoli is because, generally, when we order it from a restaurant or make it on our own, it loses its bright green color and is mushy and floppy! Blanching will cook the broccoli enough to make it a little softer, but also helps it keep its great color, and a little crunchiness!

To Finish Preparing
1. Add the blanched broccoli to the pan with the beef. The broccoli will finish cooking in this pan!
2. Add a 10 ounce bottle of teriyaki sauce to the pan and stir well! This is going to look like a lot of sauce in my picture, but when you add the broccoli it will hold a lot of the sauce in the flowers! I went with La Choy's, mainly because it was on mega sale at my grocery store, but also because their products are reliable and rarely change!