Vegetable Beef Stir-Fry

Killed a bull elk Saturday morning at seven-fifteen. Six-point, dressed about six hundred and fifty pounds, the bull I had been listening to bugle for a month in the east drainage. I was set up on a bench above a small park with the wind in my face and I called twice — soft cow chirps, nothing aggressive — and he came in at sixty yards, broadside, and I held my breath and shot from the kneeling position with the sun just clearing the ridge behind me, and he ran fifty yards into the timber and dropped clean. I sat for ten minutes after, the way you do, before walking up to him. The mountains were still and the air was cold and the light was that gold-pink Crazy Mountains light that some places never have, and I sat on a deadfall and looked at the sky and said, in my head, the things I always say after a kill — thanks to the animal, thanks to the mountain, thanks to whatever has not killed me yet. Then I got to work.

It took me ten hours to get the elk off the mountain. I quartered him on the ground, packed the meat out in three trips to where I had staged the truck, hung the quarters in the shop in Roundup by seven that evening, and sat at the kitchen table and ate a sandwich Mom had made and went to bed at eight-thirty and slept eleven hours. Sunday I broke down the meat into roasts, steaks, and grind. Two hundred and twenty pounds of usable meat in the freezers by Sunday evening. The chili meat is set aside in five-pound bags, ready for fall. The tenderloins are in the kitchen fridge for Tuesday dinner.

Patrick came out to the shop Sunday afternoon and watched me cut. I had my saw out, the one he gave me when I came home from the Army, and I was working through a hindquarter when he came in, slow, with his cane, and pulled up a stool. He sat for an hour. He did not say much. He pointed once at a place on a roast where I should trim a piece of silver skin I had missed, and I trimmed it. He nodded. He told a story about an elk he had killed in 1987 in the Beartooths that took him three days to pack out alone, a story I have heard before and that I will hear again and that I want to hear every time, because the version he tells it Sunday afternoon was a little different from the version he told it three years ago, and the differences are how stories live, and how the man telling them lives.

He is sixty-eight in two weeks. October fourteenth. He will turn sixty-nine and I will be thirty in November and Tara will be a mother in February, and the year is moving the way years do, the way water moves, slowly and then all at once, and you cannot dam it and you cannot redirect it and you cannot do anything but watch and try to remember what it looked like before it changed.

I cooked elk tenderloin Tuesday for the three of us. Pulled it from the fridge in the morning, salted it, let it come to room temperature for two hours, seared it in the cast iron in butter and beef tallow with a clove of crushed garlic and a sprig of rosemary, basted it as it cooked, pulled it at one-thirty internal, rested it ten minutes, sliced it half an inch thick. A medallion of meat the color of dark cherry, with a thin gray band of doneness at the edge and a juicy red center, eaten on a plate with a smear of horseradish cream and a roasted potato and a green salad from Mom's late lettuce. Patrick had four medallions. Mom had three. I had three. There was a moment at the table where nobody spoke for two minutes and the only sound was knives on plates and the fire in the woodstove (we lit it Tuesday night, the first fire of the season) and a barred owl down by the river. The meal was perfect in the way meals are when they are made of meat you killed and butchered and cooked yourself and shared with people you love. There is no better meal. There never will be.

Marcus made it forty-two days. He came by Saturday morning at first light because he could not sleep and he did not know where else to go. We had coffee on the porch. We did not talk for a long time. Eventually he said, I am scared. I said, I know. We sat. Then I made him breakfast — eggs, sausage, toast, the breakfast Mom would have made him — and we ate without talking. He left at eight. He texted me at noon and said, I am okay. I said good. The fire helps. The elk helps. Marcus okay helps. The week was a kill week. They do not come every year. This one did.

Tuesday was the tenderloin — the sacramental meal, the one you wait for, the one you earn. But most of the week after a kill is not that. Most of the week is getting through it: Marcus okay, Patrick resting, Tara checking in from Billings, the shop still needing cleanup, and two hundred and twenty pounds of meat in the freezer waiting to become dinner on ordinary nights. This stir-fry is what ordinary nights look like — hot pan, red meat, whatever vegetables you have, done in thirty minutes. It is not the tenderloin. But it carries the same weight, the same gratitude, because the beef in the pan came from effort and care, and the people eating it are the ones who matter.

Prep Time: 15 min | Cook Time: 15 min | Total Time: 30 min | Servings: 4

Ingredients

1 lb beef sirloin or flank steak, sliced thin against the grain
2 tbsp vegetable oil, divided
1 red bell pepper, sliced into strips
1 cup broccoli florets
1 cup snap peas, trimmed
2 medium carrots, sliced thin on the bias
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 tsp fresh ginger, grated
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tbsp oyster sauce
1 tsp sesame oil
1 tsp cornstarch dissolved in 1/4 cup beef broth
Salt and black pepper to taste
Cooked white rice, for serving

Instructions

Prep and season the beef. Slice the beef thin against the grain, about 1/4 inch thick. Season lightly with salt and pepper. Set aside at room temperature for 10 minutes while you prep the vegetables.
Make the sauce. Whisk together the soy sauce, oyster sauce, sesame oil, and cornstarch-broth mixture in a small bowl. Set aside.
Sear the beef. Heat a large cast-iron skillet or wok over high heat until smoking. Add 1 tablespoon of oil. Add the beef in a single layer and sear without stirring for 60 to 90 seconds until browned. Flip and cook 30 seconds more. Transfer to a plate — the beef should be just barely cooked through.
Stir-fry the vegetables. Add the remaining tablespoon of oil to the pan. Add the carrots and broccoli first and cook, stirring constantly, for 2 minutes. Add the bell pepper and snap peas and cook another 2 minutes until vegetables are crisp-tender and beginning to char at the edges.
Add aromatics and sauce. Push the vegetables to the edges of the pan. Add the garlic and ginger to the center and cook for 30 seconds until fragrant. Pour the sauce over everything and toss to coat. The sauce will thicken quickly — 60 seconds at most.
Return the beef and finish. Add the beef back to the pan along with any resting juices. Toss everything together for 30 seconds. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt, pepper, or a splash more soy sauce. Remove from heat immediately.
Serve. Spoon over steamed white rice and serve straight from the pan while the vegetables still have their snap.

Nutrition (per serving)

Vegetable Beef Stir-Fry — Red Meat, Quick Fire, and a Full Freezer