Have really enjoyed hearing about all the different ingredients people using in their stir frys, with the different selection of meats (chicken, pork)/tofu, veggies (tomatoes, prepackaged stir fry mix (cool!)), spices (star anise, cardamon, caraway, marjoram) and other aromatics (lemon, parsley, chives). Also, those were neat tips about the tempeh and ginger jam. Have also enjoyed reading about the detailed cooking techniques has been cool too
So far there's been tofu, pork and chicken - my stir fry's beef. Something I like to do with cooking is try to find copycat recipes of food they serve at restaurants and fast food places, so I can make a cheaper (and sometimes healthier) version at home. And so for a while, have been trying to make Shanghai Noodles and Black Pepper Beef like they have at the mall, at Manchu Wok
It's not exactly haute cuisine, but it sure is tasty
Goal: to try and make a cheaper, healthier copycat version of Manchu Wok's Shanghai Noodles with Black Pepper Beef
The Challenge: haven't made a ton of stir fries before, and the ones I've made haven't turned out so great - the beef turned out tough, and the noodles didn't taste so great
The Problem: oftentimes have been hungry and disorganized when making stir frys, and didn't marinate the meat or measure out ingredients
Solution: try to find a recipe and stick to it
There were so many recipes that came up for "shanghai noodles" and "beef stir fry" - after checking a whole bunch of different sites, I wound up going with one from Serious Eats, with a bit of Pioneer Woman thrown in:
Stir-Fried Beef with Snap Peas - Serious Eats
Beef with Peppers - Pioneer Woman
Decided to take the time to marinate the meat after reading this other article over at Serious Eats:
How to Marinate Meat for Stir Fries
Ingredients
Am not much of an expert steak chef
The recipe calls for flank steak, but No Frills only had T-Bone Grade AA ... think that's the US equivalent to ... Select? Which is a huge improvement to the mechanically tenderized hip steak I was buying before - wow, was that ever a tough cut of meat! loll
Tried keeping the veggies simple, to keep the recipe simple - so maybe I should have chosen a simpler recipe than the one at Serious Eats, because J. Kenji Lopez-Alt uses more ingredients than some people
Marinating the Meat
So this time I tried measuring out all the ingredients, and with so many, this took some time. Was a little worried at first that maybe there wasn't enough to coat the steak, but there was just enough without making it too soupy
Cooking
Two peppers and an onion wound up making a lot of little strips ...
... while one 1/2-inch T-bone steak from No Frills unfortunately did not
Final Dish
With noodles added
So the steak turned out *fantastic*!! yum yum
Really tender and flavourful. Wish I could say the same about the noodles, but had the same experience as the other noodle dish - mine felt like the sauce turned out too rich/strong, like maybe there was too much soy sauce or something?
So the steak and veggies were the star of the dish for me - will have to keep searching for a better noodle sauce recipe ... and hopefully for one that has less ingredients? But marinating the steak seemed like it was worth the extra time and effort - the steak was a thousand times better than the last time I tried making a stir fry and bought that tenderized hip steak and didn't marinate it further with a cornstarch marinade. So that was a fun thing to find out, because now maybe making a similar marinade for steak fajitas might make my those better too?
Fun trying out a new recipe, and learning something new about marinating steak
Last edited by TrustySam; 01-29-2015 at 01:13 AM.