Our slow-cooked Chinese beef and veggies over freekeh recipe is ready to eat in about 5 hours and 20 min. However, you only have about 20 min active time. The rest of the time, the crockpot is doing its amazing job to make that beef meat taste wonderful. We combine Asian and MIddle East ingredients for this wonderful dish.
Healthy Chinese Beef and Veggies Recipe
This restaurant inspired Chinese style beef with broccoli and carrots recipe is super healthy compared to take out. We substitute heavy soy sauce and brown sugar ingredients with much lighter and healthier liquid amino and honey. We also use freekeh as our bed of grain instead of rice. Freekeh is a much healthier choice. Check out our freekeh recipe for more information, including how much healthier freekeh is compared to brown rice.
Nutrient-Rich Dish
In our Asian slow-cooked beef and vegetable recipe, we include healthy ingredients such as broccoli, beef, carrots, amino liquid, sesame oil and more. The rich in iron beef combined with Vitamin C from vegetables make iron absorption much better. Freekeh itself has great health benefits on its own. For example, in addition to the protein, calcium, zinc and other nutrients, freekeh contains lutein and zeaxanthin. These two carotenoids act as antioxidants in our bodies and are very important for cancer-fighting.
Add Up More Veggies
Stronger Chinese Flavor
If you are after a very strong Chinese flavor for this recipe, you can increase the amount of amino liquid to ½ cup. Just watch the sodium. We also suggest using stock (i.e. beef or vegetable stock) instead of water. In our recipe, we use plain water because the beef and the vegetables produce their tasty flavor and we have trained our taste buds on simple food. However, if you prefer heavy taste then just substitute the water with stock and use more liquid amino in the recipe.
When To Eat Our Chinese Beef And Veggies
We usually enjoy this main course dish for dinner. I usually leave the meat to cook during the day, and then once I am home, I just put the vegetables and cornstarch into the slow cooker. In the 1 hour that the vegetables cook, I make the freekeh and get the dinner table ready. It is a very handy recipe for dinners. Sometimes, we will pack leftovers for lunch for the next day. One of my friends, use a similar recipe for a birthday party where she left the crockpot turned on, so the food stayed warm.
Equipment
We use a slow cooker also known as a crockpot to cook our one-dish main course. The slow cooker makes the beef meat tender and easy to chew. Also, simmering the meat with the garlic and amino liquid sauce makes the beef meat tastes amazing.
Chinese Beef And Veggies Over Freekeh
Ingredients
- 2 lb beef chuck roast boneless
- 3 ¾ cups warm water
- ¼ cup liquid amino
- ¼ cup honey
- 1 tbsp sesame oil
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 tbsp cornstarch
- 3 tbsp warm water
- 1 floret broccoli
- 2 carrots
- 1 cup freekeh cracked
Optional
- 1 tsp sesame seeds
- 1 can chestnuts drained
- 1 can baby corn drained
- 2 stalks baby bok choy
Instructions
Prep
- Wash hands with soap and water. Check out our article about how to wash hands properly
- Gather all ingredients
- Gently rub produce under cold running water. Scrub firm produce with a clean vegetable brush under running water.
- Slice 2 lb boneless beef chuck roast into thin stripes
- Mince the 3 garlic cloves
- Chop 2 carrot
- Split 1 broccoli floret into pieces
Cook Topping
- In a crock pot (aka slow cooker), add 2 lb boneless beef chuck thin slices
- In a small bowl, combine ¼ cup liquid amino, ¼ cup honey, 1 tbsp sesame oil, 3 minced garlic cloves. Mix well.
- Pour mixture on top of the beef thin slices and stir well.
- Add 1 ¼ cup warm water to the seasoned meat.
- Cover the crock pot and cook on low for 6-8 hours or high for 3-4 hours.
- After about 3-4 hours cooking the seasoned meat on high, in a small bowl, stir together 3 tbsp cornstarch and 3 tbsp water
- Add the cut up/split up broccoli florets and 2 chopped carrots.
- Optional: now you can add 1 can drained water chestnut and/or 1 can drained baby corn. You can also add baby bok choy
- Pour the cornstarch mixture into the crock pot.
- Stir everything well and cook on high for another 1 hour
Cook Freekeh
- Check out detailed instructions on how to cook freekeh HERE
- In summary, add 1 cup cracked dry freekeh to 2 ½ cups of warm water. Simmer until water is absorbed.
Serving
- Serve the Chinese beef and vegetable topping over the cooked freekeh.
- Optional – Garnish with sesame seeds on top
- Enjoy!
Video
Notes
- You can substitute the water used for the beef topping and freekeh with stock of your choice
- If you are used to strong Chinese flavors, then consider increasing the liquid aminos to ½ cup. Just be careful of the sodium amounts.
- You can use more broccoli if you want. My kids aren’t a big fan of them (unfortunately) so I only use them moderately
- You can use water chestnuts or baby corn in this recipe. I included a step into the recipe of when to add to the beef topping. I try to avoid foods in cans so occasionally I will skip those ingredients from the recipe.
- We are extremely excited to announce we are now using the saferecipeguide.org guidelines to make our recipe safe-friendly. We will slowly be incorporating the safe recipe guidelines into our recipe instructions!
Nutrition
We strive to provide the most accurate information possible, however, it is at your own risk when you decide to use it. For example, the nutritional information shown is an estimate provided by our recipe plugin. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. If we list a recipe as a nut-free, for instance, we do our best to check all ingredients for nuts via an application. However, it is your responsibility to double-check our work prior using the information as there is always room for manual error on our part, or an error on the application we use.