For the half-Colombian, half-Chinese content creator Jona wonThe flavors of chifa—“essentially the amalgamation of Peruvian spices and flavors in combination with a lot of Chinese ingredients,” he says—appear frequently in his kitchen. So when it came time to Give a steak to a chefWon turns a T-bone steak into lomo saltado, a traditional Peruvian stir-fry typically served with rice and potatoes.
Won has a few tricks up his sleeve to ensure “strong, beautiful, bold flavors” in the dish, as he puts it. First, he adds some homemade beef broth to the stir-fry: To create his version, Won adds scallions, yellow chili peppers, red onions, garlic, and Roma tomatoes to a pan containing hot beef tallow, giving the ingredients a quick char with a blowtorch. Those aromatics are then added to a pot with beef broth, cilantro, soy sauce, oyster sauce, red wine vinegar, and the T-bone steak, from which he had previously trimmed the meat. That pot is then brought to a boil for an hour, to reduce the broth it contains.
Garlic and ginger confit is another nontraditional addition that “takes the dish to another level,” Won says. To create this cooking paste that can last up to six months in the refrigerator, he mixes whole garlic, ginger and oil together before sautéing it in a hot pan for about 30 minutes, stirring every five minutes. The process requires patience, yes, but “what you’re left with is a very reduced and intensified flavor and this beautiful amber color.”
Armed with those two ingredients, Won sets to cooking the stir-fry. First, he adds beef tallow to a pan before adding the seasoned beef. Next, Won adds tomato, red onion, yellow chili, ginger puree, red wine vinegar, soy sauce, and the reduced beef broth. While everything simmers, fried potatoes are added to the pan before a mixture of cornstarch and water helps thicken the sauce.
And since “there’s no such thing as too much starch, especially when you’re talking to a Latino,” as Won puts it, potatoes and rice get equal attention. To accompany the rice, Won suggests first sautéing the raw rice grains in beef tallow to “intensify the flavor of the meat.” The entire dish (meat, rice, and fries) is served with a quick Creole sauce that gives it a tangy kick.
“The sirloin I ate at home as a kid was a little less traditional, it also had a little bit of ketchup on it,” Won says. “This one is a little bit more sophisticated and refined, we took a lot of extra steps… That little bit of effort paid off in terms of the final dish.”
Watch the latest episode of Give a Chef to learn Won’s tips for giving your lomo saltado a great beef flavor.
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