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Quick and Easy Dinners 1

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Top tips for quick and easy beef teriyaki

For the sauce, go for a balance of flavours
Add sweetness to offset saltiness, and give the sauce an acidic edge by adding vinegar.
Always taste your food to make sure that the flavours are just right. Also consider how the
sauce flavour complements the rest of the meal.

Give the meat a bit of tender loving care
Tenderising the meat before you cook it softens the fibres, which makes it easier to chew
and more delicious as it takes on the tasty flavours of the stir-fry sauce. Another advantage
of flattening the meat is that it cooks more quickly and evenly.

Cut the meat into even-sized pieces
This gives you a uniform cooking time and guarantees that each piece tastes as delicious as
the next.

Room temperature ingredients are best
When you cook your ingredients at room temperature, the meat fibres will have relaxed
and vegetables will cook through to perfection. Take your meat and vegetables out the
fridge at least 30 minutes before you start stir-frying and you’ll be good to go.

The trick to choosing and chopping vegetables
The secret to stir-frying is to slice your vegetables to the same size. Julienne is the perfect
cut for a stir-fry: when all the vegetables are the same size, you get a completely cooked-
through dish without any too-soft bits or unnecessarily crispy bits. Also pick vegetable
options that keep their shape and their crunch, and won’t wither away.

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