Cooking Experiment: Tangerine Beef
Dec. 31st, 2012 06:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tuftearsSo, what exactly do you do with tangerine marmalade, you might ask?
Well, besides spreading it on toasted bread with peanut butter (I need to get a proper toaster), I figured that it would be perfect for making tangerine beef. But, when searching for recipes for tangerine beef, I found no recipes that called for marmalade! Which is understandable, it's kind of going the long way around, but still...
I looked at several tangerine beef recipes, and then... improvised! I think the results are very good.
I can't be too exact about the recipe, but roughly:
I started with 1 lb of flank steak.
I sliced the flank steak into bite-sized pieces. I cut the pieces much too thickly, unfortunately, so I'll have to cut them twice as thin next time. This led to the pieces needing to be cooked a little longer than would be optimal.
I then sprinkled about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of powdered ginger, a dash of white pepper, a healthy sprinkling of crushed red pepper, and a tablespoon of low-sodium soy sauce, stirred, then added a heaping teaspoon of cornstarch, mixed to cover all the pieces evenly, and left it to marinade overnight.
The next day, I sliced up a carrot into thin julienne-style strips, an orange pepper into similar-sized strips. I prepared the green beans at around the same time too, snipping off the tips. Once the veggies were ready (and I had the green beans steaming in some chicken stock and garlic)...
I sautee'd the beef in a hot wok with a tablespoon of saffola oil. Once the beef had been seared on both sides, I swept the beef into a bowl and cooked the carrot and orange pepper strips.
Now I prepared the sauce. This would be half a cup of my homemade tangerine marmalade, but you could easily substitute the orange marmalade of your choice, plus a tablespoon of low-sodium soy sauce, and another healthy sprinkling of powdered ginger and crushed red peppers. I stirred this, then checked periodically on the veggies to see if they were tender enough.
Once the veggies were tender, I poured the sauce in, then turned the heat up and waited for it to start bubbling. After that, I stirred the veggies in, then put the beef back in.
Since I had ascertained the beef was not thoroughly cooked -- I had cut through a thicker section and noticed a suspiciously uncooked-looking middle -- I turned the heat down to a low level and put the cover on to let it steam through for a few more minutes, time I could use to microwave the leftover brown rice. (add a splash of water to leftover rice, heat for three minutes)
The result? Pretty nearly restaurant-quality tangerine beef. Yum!
It's not exactly the "crispy tangerine beef" you'd get at a restaurant. That involves deep-frying the beef and then mixing it up with the sauce of your choice. But flavor-wise, I'd say that the tangerine marmalade works great as the basis for tangerine sauce for beef or chicken.
Well, besides spreading it on toasted bread with peanut butter (I need to get a proper toaster), I figured that it would be perfect for making tangerine beef. But, when searching for recipes for tangerine beef, I found no recipes that called for marmalade! Which is understandable, it's kind of going the long way around, but still...
I looked at several tangerine beef recipes, and then... improvised! I think the results are very good.
I can't be too exact about the recipe, but roughly:
I started with 1 lb of flank steak.
I sliced the flank steak into bite-sized pieces. I cut the pieces much too thickly, unfortunately, so I'll have to cut them twice as thin next time. This led to the pieces needing to be cooked a little longer than would be optimal.
I then sprinkled about 1/2 to 1 teaspoon of powdered ginger, a dash of white pepper, a healthy sprinkling of crushed red pepper, and a tablespoon of low-sodium soy sauce, stirred, then added a heaping teaspoon of cornstarch, mixed to cover all the pieces evenly, and left it to marinade overnight.
The next day, I sliced up a carrot into thin julienne-style strips, an orange pepper into similar-sized strips. I prepared the green beans at around the same time too, snipping off the tips. Once the veggies were ready (and I had the green beans steaming in some chicken stock and garlic)...
I sautee'd the beef in a hot wok with a tablespoon of saffola oil. Once the beef had been seared on both sides, I swept the beef into a bowl and cooked the carrot and orange pepper strips.
Now I prepared the sauce. This would be half a cup of my homemade tangerine marmalade, but you could easily substitute the orange marmalade of your choice, plus a tablespoon of low-sodium soy sauce, and another healthy sprinkling of powdered ginger and crushed red peppers. I stirred this, then checked periodically on the veggies to see if they were tender enough.
Once the veggies were tender, I poured the sauce in, then turned the heat up and waited for it to start bubbling. After that, I stirred the veggies in, then put the beef back in.
Since I had ascertained the beef was not thoroughly cooked -- I had cut through a thicker section and noticed a suspiciously uncooked-looking middle -- I turned the heat down to a low level and put the cover on to let it steam through for a few more minutes, time I could use to microwave the leftover brown rice. (add a splash of water to leftover rice, heat for three minutes)
The result? Pretty nearly restaurant-quality tangerine beef. Yum!
It's not exactly the "crispy tangerine beef" you'd get at a restaurant. That involves deep-frying the beef and then mixing it up with the sauce of your choice. But flavor-wise, I'd say that the tangerine marmalade works great as the basis for tangerine sauce for beef or chicken.
