Mongolian Beef

Ingredients

• 800g flank or skirt steak, thinly sliced against the grain
• 1/3 cup cornflour
• Neutral oil, for shallow frying (about 2 cups) — staple
• 1 Tbsp sesame oil
• 5 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 1/2 Tbsp fresh ginger, minced
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 3/4 cup water
• 1 cup dark brown sugar — staple
• 6 spring onions, cut into 3cm lengths
• Steamed white rice, to serve — staple
• Sesame seeds, to garnish
• (veg side) 2 heads bok choy, halved lengthways
• (veg side) 1 head broccoli, cut into florets
• (veg side) 2 cloves garlic, sliced

Method

1. Slice the steak thinly across the grain — chilling it 20 minutes in the freezer first makes this much easier.
2. Toss the beef in the cornflour until every piece is lightly and evenly coated. Shake off the excess.
3. Heat about 2cm of neutral oil in a wok or deep pan to 180°C. Fry the beef in 4 batches, 2 minutes per batch, until crisp and browned. Drain on a rack.
4. Pour off the frying oil, leaving the pan clean. Add the sesame oil over medium heat, then the garlic and ginger. Fry 30-45 seconds until fragrant — don't let them colour.
5. Add the soy sauce, water and brown sugar. Bring to a boil, then simmer 4-6 minutes until the sauce thickens and turns glossy.
6. Return the fried beef to the pan and toss to coat.
7. Throw in the spring onions and toss for 30 seconds — they should stay bright and just barely wilted.
8. Greens: while the sauce simmers, heat a little oil in a second pan. Fry the sliced garlic 20 seconds, add the broccoli florets and 3 Tbsp water, cover and steam 3 minutes. Add the bok choy and toss 2 minutes until just wilted and still bright. Season.
9. Serve the beef over steamed white rice with a scatter of sesame seeds and the garlic greens alongside.

Notes

- Reconstructed recipe: the source page is Joshua Weissman's YouTube video and the fetched data only contained the video description, not a written ingredient list or method. This is his well-known "easiest homemade Mongolian beef" — cornflour-coated flank steak, shallow fried, tossed in a soy / brown sugar / ginger / garlic sauce with spring onions over rice — rebuilt from that description and the standard version of the recipe. Quantities are our own; treat as a close approximation, not a transcription. - Protein-first portioning: meat set to 800g per 4 serves to land ~44g protein/serve (house rule). - Beef is up 60% on the earlier version, so the sauce (soy, water, brown sugar, garlic, ginger), the cornflour coating and the spring onions are all scaled ~1.5x — otherwise 800g of fried beef comes out of the pan barely glazed. - Cornflour is the NZ name for cornstarch. A third of a cup coats 800g with a bit to spare. - Flank and skirt aren't always on the Woolworths shelf — thin-cut beef schnitzel or rump sliced thinly are the easy substitutes; both land within a gram or two of the same protein per serve. - The sauce is properly sweet, which is the point of the dish. Drop the brown sugar to 3/4 cup for a more savoury version without hurting the glaze. - Fry in batches with the oil properly hot — crowding the pan steams the coating off and you lose the crisp. - Calories/protein exclude the rice and count only the fry oil actually absorbed (roughly 2 Tbsp across the batch). - Veg/staples sweep: this dish was beef, sauce and spring onions only — nowhere near 150g veg/serve — so the house Asian greens side (2 bok choy + 1 broccoli, pan-tossed with garlic) was added as its own step, worth ~160g veg/serve and about +50 cal / +3g protein. Cornflour, fresh garlic and soy sauce lost their "staple" markers and gained search hints.