Tomato Beef

Last updated on October 6, 2021

Over a bed of hot steam rice, this sweet and sour dish is not only kids friendly, also easy to make.

Tomato beef is a classic Cantonese dish. It is a household dish that every mom knows how to make, but everyone has a different recipe. My mom make this dish with soy sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, and ketchup as sauce base; mine is a little different. I found that if the tomato is ripe, the natural sweetness should be enough, so I opted out of ketchup. Also, the dish is usually made with thinly sliced marinated beef, which could be quite tricky. It requires good knife work. Too thick, it would be too tough to chew; too thin, beef will became dry and lose its taste. By chance, I made this dish with ground beef, the result is better than I thought, and totally solved my the dry or tough beef problem. Also, instead of stir-frying, I chose to simmer, using less oil. It turns out to be much more like a ragu than the traditional tomato beef from my childhood. But we are in a pandemic, I’m making new tradition.

Here is my version of tomato beef:

INGREDIENTS

• 1/3 pound ground beef
• 2 medium tomato (I use vine tomato because they tend to be sweeter)
• 1 glass of red wine
• 1Tsp of oil
• Sugar (depends on how sweet you’d like)
• 1 tsp Paprika
• 1 tsp Cayenne pepper
• Salt and pepper
• 1 tsp Cornstarch or flour 
• Scallion for garnish  

PREPARATION

1. Cut the tomato in chunks, place them in a sauce pan over medium heat and let sear for 2 minutes. 

2. Add red wine and let tomato simmer. When tomato get softer, smash and crush tomatoes. Depends on how you like your tomato, you can crush them all into paste, or leave them chunky. Stir often.

3. In another pan over medium heat, heat 1 tbsp oil. Season the ground beef with salt and pepper. Brown the beef, and add paprika and cayenne pepper if you like. Break apart the ground beef as you go, about 15 mins. Stir in cornstarch or flour when the beef is no longer pink. Remove from heat.

4. As the tomato mixture reduce to a thicker sauce, add sugar. Bring the sauce to boil and stir in the beef. When it boils again, turn the heat to low, cover and simmer for another 10 minutes. If the sauce is too dry, add a little bit of water.

5. Server over rice. Scatter over scallions.

NOTES

I chose to sprinkle flour onto the beef as I sauteed. this not only help thicken the sauce in the next step but also allow the beef to soak up it’s meat juice and tomato sauce.