The purpose of What’s For Dinner? is to provide you a recipe with items on sale this week, with no more than 10 ingredients (not including pantry items), and coming in at under $10 per meal.
I love Chinese food. And for years, Hubs and I tried to make “at-home” Chinese food and we failed miserably.
I’m not sure why.
We went to Chinese Cooking Classes.
We bought the “right” supplies.
We used high temps and a bunch of oil.
But every time it ended up tasting like some Midwestern Mom’s version of Chinese – edible, but not something you wanted an additional helping of…if you know what I mean.
Finally, three years ago we purchased this Junior League Cookbook and inside was Aunt Kay’s Sesame Chicken. We made it and it was amazing. Every bit as good as restaurant Chinese food.
And our hope in at-home Chinese food was restored.
But we needed a beef recipe, so we gambled on the following “Crockpot Mongolian Beef” and struck gold again.You may scoff at the word “Crockpot” – but I guarantee it will be as close to a restaurant version as you’ve tasted. (And since it is suppose to get up to 95 degrees again – a nice way to have dinner without heating up the whole house.)
The original version comes from Make It Fast, Cook it Slow. I’ve made some modifications that I think made it better.
Crockpot Mongolian Beef
Ingredients
1.5 lbs of Sirloin Steak – part of the Hy-Vee Deals this week
3 cloves of garlic minced
4 green onions – sliced
1 tablespoon dried onion
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup white wine – anyone else noticing a pattern with my recipes
1/4 cup cooking sherry
1/2 tablespoon white vinegar
1 tablespoon sesame oil
1 teaspoon molasses
1 teaspoon fresh ginger
1/4 teaspoon black pepper
1/4 teaspoon red chili pepper flakes
1/2 tablespoon peanut butter
3 tablespoons brown sugar
1/4 cup cornstarch – for dredging the meat
Directions
1. Slice your meat in THIN strips. I advise doing this when the meat is partially frozen. And place strips in Ziploc bag with cornstarch. Shake.
2. Add all other ingredients to a bowl and mix well. Transfer to a 4-6 quart crockpot.
3. Take meat out of ziploc and put on top of ingredients and toss lightly.
4. Cover and cook on low for 4-6 hours. If your crockpot tends to cook hot, check after 3 hours. If it cooks slow, either set on high and cook for 2.5 hours or cook on low for longer.
5. Meat is done when it is no longer pink. Stir meat/sauce before serving over rice or noodles. YUM!
What about you? What is your favorite marinade? Share it with us via the comments or on the Kansas City Mamas Facebook Page.
Sounds good, but I’d love to try your sesame chicken recipe. My family LOVES sesame chicken!
Heather –
I’ll have to post that one when chicken is on sale. It is YUMMY. Especially with a good bottle of white wine.
Sounds fantastic! I’m going to add it to my file of crock pot recipes. Who knows, maybe I’ll have to have you guest post it on my blog. 😉 Maybe then people would actually read my blog. LOL!
Renee –
Maybe you could start posting some of your recipes HERE – I know you have several YUMMY crockpot recipes. For those that don’t know – Renee has an awesome cooking blog – Sweet and Sour Sutton
Thanks for linking up to Stockpiling Moms Thursday Recipe Spree.
Melissa
Thank you for posting this recipe. I can’t wait to try it! I agree, good Chinese recipes are very hard to find!
I made this the other day and it was really good. My only change would be to use a low sodium soy sauce as it was a bit salty. That’s what I’ll do the next time. I LOVED that you didn’t have to brown the meat first.