Results: Added More Elements After Quickly Separating the Leaves

February 17, 2024 by soLing

I learned a trick from a new recipe that saved me time in preparing Napa cabbage for cooking. With the extra minutes, I was able to spice up the vegetable with more ingredients!

Below are some links to more details, including photos:

My Story
Inspiring Recipe
- First Try
- Second Try
Continuous Improvement
Lesson for Dumber Self
Next Step for You

My Story

I wanted to eat a new dish with ground beef and found a recipe that could use the head of Napa cabbage already in my refrigerator. Normally, I would’ve just cooked this vegetable with garlic and seasoned it with salt, pepper, and sesame oil.

Inspiring Recipe

When I went online, I spotted Easy Ground Beef & Napa Cabbage Stir Fry from the blog, cookwithrachz.

First Try

To make the recipe, all I had to buy at the supermarket was an onion, since everything else that I wanted to use was already at home.

Ingredients to Use

The measurements on the recipe were very user-friendly, so I followed them as written. However, I did omit an optional item that I have yet to develop the liking for and used half the amount of dried pepper flakes due to a conversion error. Also, wheat is not an issue for my family, so I used regular soy sauce.

Below is what I ended up including in the dish:

1 pound of ground beef
1 head of Napa cabbage
4 cloves of garlic
1/2 an onion
2 tablespoons of oyster sauce
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
Salt, to taste
Pepper, to taste
1/16 teaspoon of dried pepper flakes
1 green onion
2 tablespoons of olive oil

Pepper, Napa cabbage, soy sauce, salt, olive oil, dried pepper flakes, oyster sauce, onion, green onion, garlic, and ground geef — Pepper, Napa cabbage, soy sauce, salt, olive oil, dried pepper flakes, oyster sauce, onion, green onion, garlic, and ground beef

Steps to Prepare

For the seven steps in the instructions, I followed the first two as written. As for the remaining steps, this is how it went:

Step 3 – I cooked the garlic and onion for 3 minutes. Also, while I was taking the extra oil out of the wok, I turned the heat to medium, but forgot to turn it back up to medium-high until Step 5.
Step 5 – In order for the cabbage to soften, I had to cover the wok for 5 minutes, stir the contents, and cover it for another 1 minute.
Step 6 – Before turning off the heat, I added the pepper flakes, then the salt and pepper, to taste. After turning off the heat, I added the chopped green onion.
Step 7 – I served the stir-fry over rice.

Chopped garlic and onion in a glass bowl — Chopped garlic and onion

Chopped green onion in a shot glass — Chopped green onion

Cooked ground beef in a wok with garlic and onion — Cooked ground beef with garlic and onion

Soy sauce, oyster sauce, and cabbage added to the wok and combined — Soy sauce, oyster sauce, and cabbage added and combined

Time to Eat

Here’s the dish to be served family-style.

Ground beef and Napa cabbage stir-fry on a white plate — Plate of ground beef and Napa cabbage stir-fry

Recipe Rating

Below were the results of the recipe after the first try:

Number of Ingredients	Effort (Low🤏, Medium🤏🤏, High🤏🤏🤏)	Cost per Serving (<$2💰, $2-5💰💰, >$5💰💰💰)	Taste (Not for me🤔, Trying Again🙂, Eating Regularly😋)
1️⃣1️⃣	🤏	💰	🙂

The cabbage came out tender, but with a little crunch, and had a light kick from the black pepper and red pepper flakes.

In addition, the best part of the whole experience was that I saved time by cutting the bottom off the cabbage. As a result, some of the leaves were already separated, so I didn’t have to break them off individually!