I feel the same way about stir-fries as I do about salads: sure, you can use them as a clean-out-the-fridge solution and throw in whatever you have. You can, but that doesn’t mean you should. A good stir-fry – like good a salad – has a deliberate balance of flavors, textures, and colors. Like this Spicy Orange Shrimp and Broccoli, with its combination of soft, sweet shrimp, crispy vibrant green broccoli and bright threads of orange zest in a thick and glossy sauce spiked with ginger, chili and garlic.
I call this dish “shrimp and broccoli” because that’s how we’re used to seeing a dish like this on Chinese restaurant menus, with the protein listed first. But I almost named it “broccoli and shrimp” – you might notice from these photos that there’s more broccoli than shrimp on the plate. I’m not super good about this but every now and then I make an effort to go a little more plant-forward, and move the protein to a supporting role. It’s easy when everything’s coated in a sauce so bright, citrusy and spicy – this is not your everyday boring broccoli, and I had no problem gobbling a big pile of it, garnished with just three of the succulent shrimp.
If you want more a traditional balance of shrimp to broccoli, add an extra half pound of shrimp and cut the broccoli down by about one-third. Or go the opposite direction and leave the shrimp out altogether to make this a vegetarian main, or a side dish for roasted chicken thighs or pork tenderoin painted with some of the orange sauce for a glaze.
A couple of notes on ingredients. Often when a recipe calls for citrus zest we’re talking about zest that’s finely grated using a microplane grater. In this case, I’m looking for strips of zest, scraped from the orange using a zester like the one in the photo shown below. If you don’t have a zester like this, use a small sharp knife to cut off just the outer, dark orange layer of the peel, leaving the white pith behind, and cut the peel into the thinnest slivers you can.
Make sure to zest the orange before you juice it.
There are a lot of different kinds of chili garlic sauce, and they vary quite a bit in flavor and heat. I use Huy Fong brand, and I find 1/3 cup to be the perfect amount for this quantity of shrimp and broccoli – the sauce will be hot enough to make your lips tingle, but not enough to bring tears to your eyes, and that’s a good level for me. If you like things hotter or milder, feel free to adjust the quantity of chili garlic sauce up or down, but try to find this brand or something similar that contains mainly chilis, garlic and vinegar. Don’t use a Thai variety that contains other ingredients such as fish sauce.
I’ve noticed that many homemade Chinese dishes are lacking something – they just don’t capture that authentic, restaurant-style flavor. I guess it could be that they’re missing MSG, which a lot of restaurants use – I know it’s a controversial ingredient although some say it’s not as bad for you as it’s purported to be. You can buy it for home use but I’ve never cooked with it. I actually find that the ingredient that makes the biggest difference in my own Chinese cooking is sugar. To make a deeply flavorful sauce, it’s natural to want to go heavy on the salty soy sauce and the spicy ingredients. But without sugar, Asian sauces will taste flat and a little boring. In this Spicy Orange Shrimp and Broccoli, I used brown sugar to balance out the spiciness and the slight bitterness of the orange zest, for restaurant-quality results.
Making this ahead and what to do with leftovers:
- Spicy Orange Shrimp and Broccoli takes minutes to make, and is best served hot out of the wok when the shrimp is juicy and the broccoli is crisp-tender, so it’s not intended to be a make-ahead dish. However, like most stir-fries it does make yummy leftovers – just heat it carefully in the microwave so as not to overcook the shrimp, and make sure to save some rice for sopping up the delicious sauce. Leftovers will keep 3 days.
- This recipe makes a very generous amount of sauce. If you end up with more than you need for the shrimp and broccoli, the excess will make a terrific dipping sauce for dumplings, fried wontons, chicken fingers, crab rangoons or other finger foods.
Spicy Orange Shrimp and Broccoli
Ingredients
- 1 orange
- Orange juice
- 1/3 cup chili garlic sauce (such as Huy Fong brand)
- ¼ cup soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon ginger paste or grated fresh ginger
- One pound extra-large shrimp (10 to 15 count), peeled, deveined, and tails removed
- Water
- 4 heaping cups broccoli florets, about 12 ounces
- 3 tablespoons neutral oil, such as expeller-pressed canola oil, divided
- ¼ cup brown sugar
- 2 tablespoons cornstarch
- Cooked brown or white rice for serving
Directions
- Step 1 Use a citrus zester to zest the orange. (Don’t use a grater, use a zester, which scrapes the zest off in long thin strips.) Set the zest aside for later and juice the orange. Add more orange juice to bring the total amount to 1 cup.
- Step 2 Combine the orange juice, chili garlic sauce, soy sauce and ginger in a medium bowl and whisk to combine. Add the shrimp and toss to coat it with the marinade. Chill the shrimp in the marinade for 30 minutes.
- Step 3 After 30 minutes, fill a large bowl with ice water and set it aside. Heat a wok or large nonstick skillet over high heat. Add ¼ cup of water and bring it to a boil, then add the broccoli, cover the wok, and steam the broccoli for one minute. Remove the lid, toss the broccoli, re-cover, and cook for 1 minute longer. Drain the broccoli and immediately plunge it in the ice water to stop the cooking and set its bright green color. When the broccoli is cold, remove it from the ice water to a paper towel-lined plate and blot it dry. Set the broccoli aside.
- Step 4 Return the wok to high heat and give it a minute to evaporate any residual water left over from the broccoli. Add 2 tablespoons of the oil. Carefully remove the shrimp from the marinade to a paper towel-lined plate, letting as much marinade as possible drip back into the bowl. Whisk the brown sugar into the marinade and set the marinade aside.
- Step 5 Blot the shrimp with paper towels to get it as dry as possible. Very carefully add half of the shrimp to the hot oil. Stand back, as the shrimp will spatter when it hits the hot oil. Cook the shrimp for 1 minute, tossing almost constantly, until it’s browned on both sides and just cooked through. Remove the shrimp to a clean plate. Repeat to cook the second half of the shrimp.
- Step 6 Add the remaining 1 tablespoon of oil and the broccoli to the wok and cook the broccoli until it’s browned and crisp-tender, 1 to 2 minutes. Remove the broccoli to the plate with the shrimp.
- Step 7 Whisk the reserved marinade to make sure all the sugar is dissolved, then pour it into the wok. Bring the marinade to a vigorous boil, which should take about 2 minutes. Meanwhile, in a small bowl, whisk the cornstarch with 2 tablespoons of cold water.
- Step 8 When the sauce is boiling, quickly whisk the cornstarch mixture into the sauce. The sauce should immediately thicken and turn glossy. Lower the heat to medium and add the shrimp, broccoli and ½ of the orange zest. Cook for about 1 minute, tossing, just until the shrimp and broccoli are heated through and evenly coated with the sauce.
- Step 9 Serve the shrimp and broccoli over rice, spooning some of the sauce over the top and sprinkling with the remaining orange zest.
