Firstly, this recipe is delicious and also cursed, at least when it comes to a decent picture for me to post. I’ve actually made it twice (which was fine by us, it’s delicious) after reading about it on Pioneer Woman. Both times I added a few drops of sesame oil to the marinade, a sprinkle of sesame seeds at the end and omitted the cornstarch (never have it on hand). If you like sesame, go for it. Yum!  So, the first time, it smelled so amazing, we rushed the bowls and made do with an iPhone image. At the moment, it seemed like a perfectly acceptable substitute, but in the cold light of the morning…I just couldn’t post it. So I swore I’d get a better picture next time. One that would befit such a tasty dish.

It didn’t quite work out that way. Last week we had a sushi party and broke out our new rice maker. It made such perfect rice, complete with a musical trill of “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star”, that we’ve been using it almost every day. It made slightly disappointing basmati rice last night, so I wanted to give it a chance to redeem itself today with brown rice. Um. Yeah. Not so much. It implements fuzzy logic so the timer jumps around, like in this case, where it was stuck on 10 minutes for about 30. I thought surely it must be almost ready, so I started cooking.

With any other recipe, I’m sure this would have worked…but the beef & broccoli curse was living strong and the rice was STILL not done, 20 minutes later. Grrr. The meal was ready but not the base…what to do, what to do. I was torn between my resolve to get a good picture and my need for rice… So we waited. And waited. I actually gave up with 2 minutes left and popped that sucker open…to brown rice porridge. I suppose I must have put too much water in but in my heart of hearts, I know what happened here. It was the curse. It was also the curse that gave me an overcast day…that resulted in grainy images for you. So I give up on glorious beef & broccoli pictures…onward and upward!

As for the beef & broccoli itself, it was still tasty after being held over for an additional 15 minutes. The rice porridge? Not so much.

You can see Pioneer Woman’s recipe here or check out the original, original recipe from Steamy Kitchen here.