Your basic, but tasty stir fry.

Got the urge to make a stir fry to use up the bag of broccoli slaw I used for a salad the other day.  I also had the majority of a leftover bag of fresh snow peas from when I brought it to Pizza Hut last night to go with my salad bar.  What?  I bring my own bottle of light dressing too!
Anyway, I made an orange chicken stir fry last week and the kids HATED it.  Reid and I loved it.  I will never, ever buy the bottled stir fry sauce again.  For one thing, it's SOOOOOO easy to make it from scratch.  And secondly, have you ever looked at the list of ingredients on one of those bottles?  BLEH!  So I thought I'd try a non-sweet stir fry tonight.  It still had brown sugar in it, but only 2 tablespoons as opposed to the 1/3 cup from the orange.  This uses cornstarch for thickness instead of all that sugar.

I usually use a sirloin and cut super-thin against the grain and it comes out great.  This time flank was on sale so I grabbed it.  I asked the lady at the Martin's meat counter to cut it "super thin for stir fry."  I was so f'ing mad when I came home and unwrapped it- the pieces were about 1/2" thick.  Gross.  I tried as hard as I could to slice the strips in half.  Use whichever cut you like, just slice across the grain so it doesn't come out like shoe leather.  This took me so many bad meals to learn.  Oh, and sorry about the two brownish pieces.  I started to put them in the marinade then thought "oops!" and took them back out to photograph.  Why I didn't just leave them out of the photo I can not figure out.  It didn't look gross in person but in the photo it's kind of squicky looking.  I don't have any kind of photoshop on my new computer so you'll have to deal with it.



You can use what veggies you like.  Normally I would do a broccoli/onion/green pepper combo but this is what I had tonight- broccoli slaw, onion and snow peas.  Yummy!



I made a marinade with soy sauce, just a bit of brown sugar, ginger (I just can't buy fresh- it looks like dried poop), and some corn starch to thicken (you can use flour if you don't have corn starch).  The original recipe called for 1/3 c. soy sauce and some water.  Screw that!  I used 1/2 C. soy sauce because I loooooove salty!  Toss the meat in and let it sit for a spell while you do you veggies.



Heat up your big pan.  I have a non-stick pan so I just use a teensy bit of oil, like a teaspoon.  Toss in your veggies and cook the for a few minutes.  If you don't like them crispy and bright green, keep them in a bit longer.  I like them crisp!



Take out the veggies and put them in a bowl and set aside.  Put your marinated meat in the pan.  I could only fit about half of it in the pan at a time.  Cook without stirring so it gets good and browned, then flip and cook the other side.




Doesn't it look good when you flip it over?  Mmmm, steamy.  :o)




Throw the cooked meat on a plate and cook the other half the same way- but don't dump out the marinade sitting in the bottom of the bowl!  I got the idea of throwing thickly sliced green onions on at this point from another food blog.  I wish I had waited until the very end and sliced them thin and added them on top.  I just didn't like it this way.  But the picture is pretty. :o)




Once the second batch of meat is cooked, dump the rest of the marinade from the bowl and stir around to kill all the raw meat cooties.  Add in the rest of the cooked meat and veggies and stir until it's all hot and thick.  Don't cook too long or your veggies will get soggy.



Throw it on a Santa plate and put some fried noodles on top in the hopes any annoyingly picky shits will actually eat it.





Yeah, that's what I thought.




Ya know, Tallulah was always my favorite! :o)  Wow, I have a lot of crap on my table.  That giant brown UPS packet is the Blik prize i won last week!




1-2 pounds beef (sirloin, flank, or use chicken... whatever you like)  I like more veggies than meat in my stir fry so I stay close to 1 pound.
1/2 c. soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
1 tsp ground ginger
2 tablespoons flour or corn starch
4-6 cups mixed veggies- snow peas, broccoli, onion, peppers, broccoli slaw, napa cabbage, thinly sticed carrots (yuck) Whatever your faves are...
Oil for pan

1. Mix soy sauce, brown sugar, ginger and flour.  Add the meat and stir to combine then set aside.
2. Heat pan with oil over med-high heat.  Add veggies and cook for a minute or two then remove from pan and set aside.
3. Add the meat into the pan in a single layer.  You will probably have to do this in two batches.  Brown one side, then turn and brown the other.  Remove from pan and cook the other half the same way.
4. Pour the leftover mariande on the meat in the pan.  Add the first batch of meat and the veggies in the pan.  Stir for a minute and let it thicken and heat through.  Serve over rice and listen to your kids bitch about dinner.