It’s pretty easy. Make the sauce. Stir fry the beef. Toss the beef with the sauce and serve. On rice noodles. On rice. With greens. Whatever you want. Make it your own.
The sauce makes this Thai beef stir fry
The sauce is the thing here. It’s Thai nam jim. Fresh chilies. Lime. Cilantro. Sugar. Shallots. Fish sauce. It’s all the big Thai flavours in one dish. Nam jim is super versatile too. Use it in Thai beef stir fry. Or with roast chicken. As a dipping sauce. With grilled meats or chicken. On wings. Crazy good stuff. Crazy versatile too.
Couple of things to note here. There are chilies and there are chilies. Unless you are a serious chili head don’t use those little thai chilies. Those are blow your head off hot. Look for larger red chilies. They call them finger hots around here. About as hot as a jalapeño. Not so scary. I hear Fresno chilies are similar but I don’t get those around here.
Give the nam jim some time to let the flavours meld
The other thing is to give your nam jim some time to let the flavours come together. That takes about an hour so give yourself some time. Even better mix some up on the weekend and use it during the week. It only gets better as it sits. You don’t have to use a knife to chop everything in the sauce. That’s probably the best way but you can use a food processor in a pinch. Just don’t puree everything into a homogenous sauce. You want little bits of everything coming through in every bite. I like Thai beef stir fry with rice noodles. But it’s great on rice. Or as a salad. In a sandwich. It’s beef and big Thai flavours. And it’s weeknight easy. What’s better than that?
