BEST Mongolian Beef Recipe - The Daring Gourmet (2024)

FAQs

What cut of beef is Mongolian beef made from? ›

What's the best cut of beef for making Mongolian Beef? Restaurants often slice up flank steak for this type of stir-fry. It's also a great choice for beginner cooks, because the grain on flank steak is really, really obvious, which makes it easy to make sure that you're slicing against the grain.

That's because restaurants use baking soda or cornstarch to tenderize the meat. It's a process called velveting beef. While the beef is tender (artificially so), it's lacking true beefy flavor. I gave up ordering Mongolian Beef years ago once I figured out how to make it better at home.

Szechuan beef vs Mongolian beef, what's the difference? Szechuan beef has a sweet and spicy flavor, and Mongolian beef has a mild taste. Szechuan beef hails from the Sichuan Province in southwestern China. Its main ingredients are chili peppers, garlic, and Szechuan peppercorn.

Despite its name, the dish has nothing to do with Mongolian cuisine. Mongolian beef is among the meat dishes developed in Taiwan where Mongolian barbecue restaurants first appeared. Thus, none of the ingredients or the preparation methods are drawn from traditional Mongolian cuisine but rather from Chinese cuisine.

To prepare the dish, thinly sliced flank steak is first “velveted” or tenderized by marinating it in a mixture that includes baking soda, before being coated in cornstarch.

Whether hosting a holiday cookout, serving up some stir-fry or tackling game meats, baking soda is the go-to meat tenderizer to help make your steak, chicken or turkey silkier, juicier and yummier.

In Chinese cooking, proteins like beef, pork or chicken are velveted first before stir-frying them. There are several ways to velvet, but at its most basic level, it involves marinating meat with at least one ingredient that will make it alkaline. This is what tenderizes the meat, especially cheaper, tougher cuts.

Allow the meat to soak in the baking soda solution for 15 minutes. Remove the meat from the liquid and briefly rinse the meat in plain water to strip off the baking soda solution (or as much of it as possible). Cook as desired.

Stir-Fried Spicy Beef (Previously: Mongolian Beef)

Sliced beef marinated in soy and then stir-fried with peppers and onions.

Which is better, Hunan or Szechuan beef? ›

Those who prefer a more intense heat may enjoy Hunan dishes more while those who look for a unique type of spice may look to Szechuan dishes instead.

Szechuan Beef has a sweet and spicy flavor with added chili peppers and Szechuan peppercorns. The Szechuan peppercorns has a distinctive tingly numbing sensation when eaten. Mongolian beef has a mild and much simpler taste, making it a kids' favorite, outside of broccoli beef.

Making the Mongolian Beef Sauce

Whisk the Mongolian Beef Sauce ingredients together consisting of soy sauce, water, brown sugar, Asian sweet chili sauce, rice wine, hoisin, pepper, sriracha and cornstarch.

Like many stir fry dishes, it is important to thinly slice the meat, which means stir-frying will obviously overcook the meat, which in turn will make it tough and chewy.

Kung Pao chicken (Chinese: 宮保雞丁; pinyin: Gōngbǎo jīdīng; Wade–Giles: Kung¹-pao³ chi¹-ting¹; Zhuyin Fuhao: ㄍㄨㄥ ㄅㄠˇ ㄐㄧ ㄉㄧㄥ), also transcribed Gong Bao or Kung Po, is a spicy, stir-fried Chinese dish made with cubes of chicken, peanuts, vegetables and chili peppers and Sichuan peppercorns.

I recommend flank steak in Mongolian Beef because although it is an inexpensive cut of beef, it transforms into buttery delicious when marinated and coated in soy sauce and cornstarch.

More often than not, it's the cheapest cuts like flank or hanger steak, or loin or butt meat from the pork or beef. Just like in the modern age, the mark of a good chef is the ability to turn cheaper ingredients into something really tasty.

Carpaccio (pronounced "car-PAH-chee-oh") is a traditional Italian appetizer consisting of raw beef sliced paper-thin, drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice, and finished with capers and onions. In contemporary cuisine, carpaccio can refer to any thinly sliced raw meat or fish, such as tuna, served in this fashion.

Flank meat comes from the animal's abdomen, below the loin and sirloin. This primal cut is long and flat. The area contains a lot of muscle, used when the steer walks, so flank meat can prove tough if not marinated or cooked properly. Flank meat is quite lean.