Beef Basil Pasta

This dish was inspired by my friend’s restaurant, The Bean Store. It's a spicy and very fragrant dish eaten with rice or spaghetti pasta. I also really enjoy eating pho and one of the main herbs added to pho is Thai Basil, which is different from Basil which is used in western cooking. The level of spiciness depends on your own tastes. I like it spicy but not everyone in my family does so I had to adjust the recipe accordingly.

2-3 servings

250 grams of lean ground beef
1 cup of Thai Basil roughly chopped
2 tablespoons of fish sauce
1 tablespoon of oyster sauce
1 tablespoon of soy sauce
½ tablespoon of sugar
3 cloves of garlic, minced
250 grams of spaghetti pasta
2 tablespoons of vegetable oil
6 small chilies (or other type depending on how spicy you like it)

1) Add all sauces and sugar to your ground beef and mix well
2) Mince garlic and dice chilies into small pieces at an angle.
3) Put your stove on med high, add oil, garlic and chilies, stir fry until the garlic browns a bit
4) Add beef, and stir fry it until it browns.
5) Add Thai basil at the end as it doesn’t take much time to brown.

Recipe inspired by The Bean Store and Food.com's Minced beef, garlic, and holy basil

That’s it. It’s a very simple and quick dish to make. My mother in law commented that it needed some more sauce. I think I will add some broth next time as it was a bit dry. The original recipe has broth added but I didn't have it on hand so I didn't add any. Other than that I thought the Thai Basil added a lot of flavor to the dish. The fish sauce and others cooked out so there’s no pungent smell at the end. As is, I would give it a 4/5 in terms of taste and 5/5 in terms of simplicity and ease of cooking. From start to finish it only took 10 minutes to cook. I'll have to do some adjustments and see if I can make the dish taste better in the future.