That’s when I realized something important: In addition to helping the meat cook evenly, shaking and stirring helps deglaze the pan—as the beef moves across the pan, it swipes up fond, coating the meat so that there is virtually no marinade left on the surface of the pan that could burn. With this in mind, I adjusted my technique. I placed the meat in the pan and swirled the pan occasionally as the first side cooked so that the meat moved around but didn’t turn over. Only after the first side had browned sufficiently did I begin stirring and shaking the pan more vigorously to get the cubes to cook on all sides.
I found that about 3 to 4 minutes on the first side and 2 to 4 minutes on the remaining sides gave the meat a deep brown color on its exterior while still keeping it juicy and pink on the inside—a hallmark of shaking beef.
Another discovery: With all that open space in the pan, the oil had a tendency to splatter, especially once the meat began to shed moisture.
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