I love cooking, very much, but I seldom cook because it takes too much time buying the ingredients, carrying the goodies back home, marinating the meats, washing the veggies and do all the chopping and slicing etc etc etc. The process can go on and on, it get worse if you are planning for desserts as well. You do not really have time to do all those especially if you have to work, sometimes you just want someone to do all the prep work for you. And today, I am going to introduce that someone to you, she is Secret Ingredient.
Secret Ingredient aims to make cooking fun and easy. All their recipes are designed to be cooked in 30 minutes or less! They uses fresh ingredients that sourced from around the world and have them freshly prepared everyday. The menu is changed weekly so to keep your meal interesting on the table. What's more, they even collaborate with many Hong Kong's hot restaurants and introduce a line of premium recipe where they share a recipe of their gourmet dish, so you can cook them at home! Below is snap from the website, they are currently doing a dish from "The Salted Pig".
The dish I cooked was a recipe from their Premium Range as well, it was called 'Shaking Beef' with Jasmine Rice from the renowned Vietnamese restaurant Chom Chom. It was a free cooking try out offered from Secret Ingredients and I am super thankful for the offering =).
I was very excited to receive my goodie bag delivered right to my door. So in the bag, basically as said, all ingredients were already prepared and numbered. So all chopping, slicing and marinating are omitted. Secret Ingredients is angel sent from the kitchen.
Despite the ingredients, there was also a leaflet of cooking manual. A picture of the final products is shown on the cooking manual, which looks nicer than my final product. Hmm.....!!
A step by step instruction with pictures is given, making your life much easier. Before your started cooking, familiarise yourself with the ingredients and the cooking procedure to ensure no hassle later. Or like me, have an assistant read out the steps loud and clear next to me while I cook :P. Just FYI, Secret Ingredients also provides Chinese version of this recipes.
So for Chom Chom's 'Shaking beef' with Jasmine Rice, we have below ingredients nicely arranged on my wooden plate:-
A - Marinated Beef Fillet, B - Vegetable Oil, C - Unsalted Butter, D - Sliced Spring Onion, E - Stir-fry Sauce, F - Baby Garlic Cloves, G - White Onion & Sliced Large Red Chilli, H - Jasmine Rice.
So we have got everything ready on the table, let's start cooking! First I preheated the frying pan and heated half of the vegetable oil. Next I added in the marinated beef cubes and seared for 2 minutes. Hmmmm.... aroma was filling the kitchen! When the beef cubes were nicely seared with brown edges, I removed them from the pan and placed them into a kitchen bowl.
Next, I started frying the onions, baby garlic for 2 minutes. The other half of the vegetable oil was used in here.
After that, I added in the unsalted butter and had it melted on the pan. Next I added the seared beef back into the pan and poured in the stir-fry sauce and gave it a little stir.
Finally I sprinkled some spring onions on top and Ta-dah! Chom Chom's 'Shaking Beef' was nicely done in no effort!
You might think this is a very simple dish that you can make it without Secret Ingredient. That was my first thought when I got the ingredients and recipe too. If you think the same, I can tell you that you are SO wrong. The dish was screaming with flavour with their secret stir-fry sauce and palatable beef cube which was incredibly tender and juice! My mom was actually impressed with the dish!
I am very impressed by the concept of Secret Ingredients, this Chom Chom 'Shaking Beef' can be one ordinary dish but with good and fresh ingredients, the dish came out one of the kind. Secret Ingredients does make cooking easy and fun. Even the most clueless housewife can definitely cook a gourmet meal at home. Seriously Secret Ingredients recipe is superb considerate to the point that specific cooking time is listed at every stage, and they even mention about pre-heating the pan and heating the oil. How could anyone go wrong with this well thought cooking leaflet?
All in all, Secret Ingredient is definitely my choice if I want to cook a romantic dinner for two. How easy is life can be when gourmet meal can be ready by 30minutes? As long as the chopping is done, I am in! Not to mention the meal for two is only around two hundred dollar.
Just a little side note I want to make is that I like how Secret Ingredient is a socially responsible company. They started a campaign called 'One More Plate' in 2013 which they donate 5% of their gross profits to people in need through charity Feeding Hong Kong. You can check out their charity work at >> Here <<.
If you are interesting in trying Secret Ingredient, you can browse their website and recipes at http://www.secretingredient.com.hk/. Secret Ingredient delivered to 80% of Hong Kong and most orders can be delivered same day before 3pm. Sign up for their newsletter now and receive 30% off your first meal =)
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