Simple Spicy Mongolian Beef

The Hubble and I love Asian food. Whether it's Japanese, Chinese, Korean or Vietnamese we are usually down to eat it (however, I'm not a huge fan of Thai food). We love Asian food so much we are those pretentious people who have several sets of chopsticks in our drawer).

Please excuse my short trip through the daisies....While traveling across the country these last 6 months I had to put all my worldly possessions into storage, except for a "few" choice books (the word few is used extremely loosely here seeing as how a "few" to me was about 20 to 30 books). Included in these worldly possessions were all of my cookbooks and cooking magazines. Well, we finally settles into our new home in Missouri and as soon as I pulled my cookbooks and magazines out of the box I immediately plopped my hiney down and started perusing them. In the December 2009 issue of Cooking Light magazine (I just realized I bought this issue while on the road...oops) I found a recipe for Mongolian Beef. I decided I was absolutely going to make that one of the first meals we enjoyed in our new home.

See?? I was going somewhere. I was going back to the idea of Asian food. Anyway. I'm going to stop rambling and get to the recipe....

First step, gather your ingredients. I like to do this first so I'm not scrambling through the kitchen trying to find the things I need as the food is cooking and my hands are a mess.

Next, take your soy sauce, sugar, cornstarch, cooking sherry, hoisin sauce, rice vinegar, chile paste with garlic, salt, and ground ginger. Put it all together to make your sauce. You want to make this first so all the flavors can sit and mix together and become super close by the time you pour it over your meat.

Now go ahead and chop your scallions into somewhere around 2 inch lengths. No need to get a ruler, you can just eye it.

Then take your gorgeous steak...

And cut across the grain to make thin strips of beef.

Now heat up your wok. When the wok is nice and hot, pour your peanut oil in. When that's hot, dump in your minced garlic.

Then toss in your steak and and sautee it all together for about 2 minutes or until it's brown.

When the meat is brown, toss in your scallions. Sautee these for about 30 seconds.

Then take your friendly sauce and pour that in.

Stir the mixture continuously for about a minute or until the sauce is thickened.

Doesn't that look delicious??

Once everything is nice and hot, pour the meat mixture over some rice, noodles, and or vegetables. Grab your chopsticks (or fork) and enjoy!

Spicy Mongolian Beef
 Adapted from Cooking Light Magazine

Ingredients:

• 4 Tablespoons low-sodium soy sauce
• 2 teaspoons sugar
• 2 teaspoons cornstarch
• 4 teaspoons cooking sherry
• 4 teaspoons hoisin sauce
• 2 teaspoons rice vinegar
• 2 teaspoons chile paste with garlic
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 teaspoons ground ginger
• 2 Tablespoons peanut oil
• 2 Tablespoons minced garlic
• 1 1/2-2 pounds sirloin steak
• 16 medium green onions 

Directions:

1. Combine first 9 ingredients, stir until thoroughly mixed; set aside
2. Chop green onions into 2-inch lengths; set aside
3. Thinly slice steak across the grain.
4. Heat peanut oil in large wok, add minced garlic and beef; saute for 2 minutes or until beef is browned.
5. Add green onions; saute for 30 seconds.
6. Add sauce mixture; stir continuously for 1 minute or until sauce is thickened.
7. Serve with rice, noodles, and or vegetables and enjoy!