Mongolian Beef 5-stars

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Retired Spook

Master of the Pit
Original poster
Jun 28, 2022
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While I do not have the appropriate equipment for professional quality stir-frying at home, I was able to pull this single-serving of Mongolian Beef off via a little ingenuity. It tasted so great I just had to post a photo.

I have to devise a reasonably affordable way to assemble an outdoor stir-frying station using a larger wok and a high BTU burner...

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Loving these stir fry threads! Looks great! Folding table with cajun cooker on top is a little high for but doable for me. Wok fits in mine OK without a ring. Legit wok hei (wok flavor).
Thanks zwiller I will check it out!
 
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Welcome. Glad I am not the only one that can taste the difference. Last good joint closed a while back and only places here are what I call "food court" quality.
 
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LOL 600 dollars heck no LOL I'd rather get a blackstone and skip the wok LOL... I agree though my apartment stove though gas is pretty weak too. I am just gonna start doing smaller batches see how that goes for now. I don't wok enough to spend any real cash
 
To me wok wei is like the final frontier/last 10%. Sauce and veggie mixes are WAY more important. IMO it is essential to use homemade stock for stir fry. EVERYTHING I run has it.
 
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This Is what you want. Big Johns is the best I have their three bay steam table and it’s built to perform and last! Good looking Mongolian beef by the way!
Looks real nice but definitely out of my price range, especially for the amount of "outdoor" cooking a sane person can do here in hell - AKA Texas - where a person is lucky if they can cook outside 3-months out of the year without sweating like a pig.

I need some reasonable cost-effective ideas for how to set up an outdoor wok cooking station wherein I can cook an entree', add some water to the wok and brush it out (where to dump the water?) and thereafter commence cooking the next entree, without spending $10,000 that I do not have for a commercial wok range.
 
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Looks good.

Recipe? I've never made Mongolian beef as good as PF Changs, so I'm always looking for tips.

Little trick for you. You want a high BTU burner? Use a chimney starter as your burner.

The one thing I forgot to do was dredge the marinated flank steak in corn starch before I seared it - may explain why my photo looks different than theirs - but it still tasted fantastic.
 
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I watched Daddy Lau cook his Mongolian Beef recipe



He is using a butane burner similar to the one I purchased (15,000-BTU) and a nice round-bottom carbon steel wok that I wish I knew the brand of because so much of what is offered on Amazon is just pure junk and I just cannot stand junk.

Years ago I purchased a Calphalon flat-bottom hard-anodized aluminum NOT non-stick wok that I used to cook my Mongolian Beef, yesterday. It works but its going in the garbage as soon as I find a suitable carbon steel wok. This wok has been a pita since the day I bought it. It works better on the butane burner than it ever did on the electric range I had when I first bought the wok but it will never match a carbon steel wok. Live and learn.

I still need to find a solution as to what to do with between-entree' wok cleaning water and left-over oil - down the drain is just not an option. Where would a person take a 5-gallon bucket full of wok-oil / water to dispose of?
 
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That looks pretty good to me, but I'll forgo the chopsticks. All I can manage to do with them is miss my mouth and make a mess...:emoji_laughing:
I was much more chop-stick proficient during my youth when I lived in Hawaii! :emoji_laughing:
 
I put it in my garden when I trench compost fish carcasses. It'll decompose. I also use old cooking oil for fire starter fuel; works great!
I suppose that digging a hole and dumping it in would work - never thought of that! But the neighbor's cats might start disappearing if they start sniffing around...
 
After very careful observation of Daddy Lau's video I believe I have discovered the brand of wok he is using! However I have serious doubts that he seasoned his wok so well on a 15,000-BTU butane burner as he is a professional chef that owned his own Chinese restaurant and surely had a serious wok station.

One step at a time. :emoji_thumbsup:

[edit] Wok ordered! Some reviews suggest a carbon steel wok can, in fact, be heat treated with a 15,000-btu butane burner prior to seasoning. We'll see...
 
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Love the Lau stuff but not a fan of his process. Not saying it's wrong, just not for me. I realize there are many ways to approach this style of cooking. IE my stock has ginger, garlic, and green onion in it so I don't have to add to the cook. It is a milder flavor and I can see someone one wanting it bolder but I like it that way. Same with all that protein prep: rinsing, marinading, velveting and deep frying. Use a LITTLE oil and fry. Ideally, this leaves little if any oil to dispose of. In fact, I have a few books that advocate DRY stir frying beef. Gives more mailliard. Plan to fool with that later. That being said, if you are into it by all means do it. Just know if you omit it you will need to add corn starch to thicken the sauce.

I bet 15k works as the wok is pretty thin. My burner is 40k BTU and do not have it up halfway.
 
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