adam ragusea’s broccoli in garlic sauce
This vaguely American-Chinese recipe for broccoli in garlic sauce is solely, unashamedly and wholesale lifted from Adam Ragusea. Go watch the video for it here, it’s great.
I’ve cooked it a bunch and I love the powerful, salty sauce you make. I only reproduce it in my blog because it’s easier for me to browse the ingredients here than it is to rewatch the video for the 18th time or scrubbing through the description.
broccoli in garlic sauce
Ingredients
- 1 medium-large crown of broccoli about 350g
- 3-4 garlic cloves
- 1 small thumb of ginger about the same amount as the garlic
- 1/2 a small fresh chili or throw the whole thing in
- 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
- 60 ml soy sauce
- 1 tablespoons brown sugar
- 2 teaspoons mustard
- 3 tablespoons oyster sauce
- 2 teaspoons toasted sesame oil
- 2 tablespoons cornflour
- pepper
- MSG to taste
- sesame seeds for garnish
- 200 g white rice to serve
Instructions
- Get the rice cooking the way you like it - this will take around 20 minutes and the rest can be made while this cooks. Fluff before serving.
- While you're getting the rice going, peel and chop the garlic and ginger with the chilli.
- Get a pan of water on to boil, and use it for the broccoli. This will cook for a maximum of 4 minutes so it's barely tender - it will finish cooking in the sauce.
- Drain off some of the cooking water - maybe half - into a bowl or mug so you can use it for slackening the sauce.
- Coat the pan with a thin film of cooking oil (NOT the sesame oil), throw in the garlic, ginger and chili, stir and fry for a couple minutes until soft. Put in a generous splash of water, soy sauce, sugar, mustard, oyster sauce, sesame oil, onion powder and a few grinds of pepper.
- While that's simmering, dissolve the cornflour in just enough water to make a thick slurry. While one hand stirs, use the other hand to drizzle in slurry until you get a very thick consistency — you might not need all of the slurry.
- Taste the sauce, consider adding MSG (or salt) or more of any of the other sauce ingredients it might need. Remember that the broccoli and rice are totally unseasoned, so the sauce needs to be strong enough and salty enough to flavor both itself and the broccoli and rice, i.e. too strong on its own. The texture should be very thick, because the broccoli will water it down a little. The sauce is easy to burn when it's this thick, so you might want to turn the heat down (or off).
- Dump in the broccoli and toss it in the sauce until warm and coated. You can stir in more hot water if the sauce is too thick. Dish out the rice, serve the broccoli and extra sauce on top, optionally garnish with sesame seeds.
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