Jet Tila's Mongolian Beef _ In the Kitchen with Jet Tila _ Food Network

Jet Tila here .

And today we're making Mongolian beef that Chinese American comfort delicious classic .

Uh The secret here is getting that beef super tender and I'm gonna show you exactly how the restaurants do it .

Let's get started .

The big secret I want to let you in on in this dish is how to marinade your meat at home and get it walk tender like they do in the restaurants .

So let's start by marinating our beef .

I'm starting with flank steak , which I think is probably the best all purpose cut of beef for the walk because it's chewy .

Um But if we tame it with this marinade , it has a really beautiful beefy taste .

These are the secret ingredients to marinade uh your meat at home like the restaurants baking soda that's gonna help tenderize the meat .

There's a fancy word that chefs use called denaturing , but all that really means is getting that meat to kind of like fall apart by means of the baking soda .

So the next thing is cornstarch , cornstarch is going to help pull in the marinade flavors and also create that kind of fun kind of slippery texture .

So those two kind of alter the meat texture .

We want salt now to give flavor to really punch up that beefiness .

So we're gonna have to add some water to distribute all of those ingredients and then we're gonna add a little oil .

Now , what oil is going to do is keep you from using too much oil in the wok .

It's kind of like getting the oil in earlier .

So when the meat hits the pan , it doesn't stick .

So , all right , marinade is made .

Now let's cut the meat flank steak .

The classic kind of chef tip of cutting against the grain applies here .

First , I'm gonna cut with the grain .

I want cubes here .

So let's say one inch by one inch .

So I'm gonna go with the grain one inch .

So what you see here is an entire flank steak , as you would see it at the market , you can ask the market to cut off a half or you can go by the poundage you're going to need , I'm only gonna use half this flank steak .

Now , cutting against the grain simply means cut against the muscle fibers because if you cut against the muscle fibers , there's nothing to hold on to imagine a cluster of rubber bands .

If you cut against the rubber bands and they splay open , that's really similar to the proteins in the meat .

So when you cut against the grain , the meat stays tender .

All right .

So now I've cut the flank steak into one inch strips with the grain and now I'm gonna cut them into one inch pieces against the grain .

So I'm cutting cubes today .

Um , but if you wanted that classic two inch wide kind of plank that like most stir fries are made of , you would actually marinate it the same way , but you would cut it against the grain kind of this way .

Oh , ok .

So the marinade is done .

So you really wanna work that marinade into the beef ?

Um Pretty well .

I mean you want to massage it in there because you want the baking soda and the corn starch to really coat the beef .

Well , what's gonna happen is as it marinates , the meat starts to tenderize and it sucks in all that flavor .

All right .

So um let me wash my hand really quick to stay clean .

All right .

So with clean hands , I'm gonna wrap this tightly and stick it in the fridge .

The marinade is gonna work its magic .

So give this marinade at least 2 to 4 hours all the way to overnight to really get it super tender .

So while that's marinating , hit paws and come back when it's time to cook .

Welcome back .

So the beef is marinating , it cannot over marinade .

So we're gonna take a few more minutes to finish our prep and then grab it .

All right .

So let's get down to the veg prep part of this um garlic .

So the way to cut garlic is to leave the whole head intact and just cut off a little bit of that root .

End all the garlic cloves are only holding on by this little piece here .

Now , you can actually just get in and break off the cloves that you need .

If you lean down with your knife onto each clove , the skin literally will just pop right off that simply .

Now with the garlic cleaned , I'm gonna show you how to mince .

Don't mince garlic too finely for the walk .

All you're going to do is smash it as flat as possible .

And then with your guide hand , which is your non dominant hand , make sure to curl your fingertips under and make sure to keep that thumb behind uh those guide fingers .

And I'm just going to do a nice thin slicing pass meaning quarter to an eighth inch .

Once that's done , quarter , turn the garlic and then give it another thin slicing pass .

That's as far as you're ever gonna need to take garlic for the Asian kitchen .

I'm gonna push that over to the side .

I also like rinsing my knife after garlic because garlic has these really delicious pungent oils , but they are sticky .

So give that knife a good wipe .

All right , bell peppers .

Uh This is how I like to cut bell peppers .

Um Remember the jet Tila rhyme .

A tile becomes a slice , a slice becomes a dice .

So first we'll take a quarter inch tile off the back , we'll take a quarter inch tile off the front .

And usually if you know what you're doing , the stem pops right off just like that .

And now , uh , insert the knife into one side , don't go all the way through , flatten the knife and just roll the seed pod away and you get these perfect little planks of bell peppers , I'll do a little faster on this one .

So front , back knife in and roll .

It's also a really cool way to impress your friends .

Uh , when they come over also to keep your work efficient .

I like to put , uh , both bell peppers on top of each other , cut them into planks .

And for this , actually , I think I'm gonna cut large dice .

So , uh , one inch by one inch works for me .

So there and I want both colors and same thing here .

And if you wanted to save some for garnish , I'm totally cool with that too .

And with the tops by cutting your bell peppers this way , you have zero , waste .

Awesome , really fast and really easy .

I also like using a big cutting board because my wife can't stand it when there's a bazillion bowls .

Be thoughtful of the people who clean up around you .

And if it's yourself , makes your life a lot easier .

So the way I like to cut onion is to take about a quarter inch slice off the top .

And I do the same thing to the root side .

So the onion sits up straight , cut the onion right in half , North Pole to South Pole and peel them .

This way makes life a lot easier .

Onions are so much easier to peel um , in the halves and once your halves are peeled , you have a lot of options .

I could slice , I could dice , I can cut Leonis .

But for uh this dish , I'm just gonna do large dice .

Another good tip for you .

Let's always cut the root end again .

You can actually tell if you see the rainbow .

That's the front , the , the top that grows up and this is the root which goes down .

Um I want you to cut that root end right out because that's the piece that holds the onion together by taking that out .

When you cut the onion up , it falls apart beautifully .

So for large dice , I'm just gonna go half and then come the other way and cut one inch pieces .

And as you can see the onion falls right apart , so half one inch pieces and the last thing I need to cut is ginger .

Ginger is quite intimidating to some people , but I'm gonna show you how to make it really simple .

I just want you to square off the pieces of ginger .

And if you see like little fingers just go and break them off , just kind of isolate the largest kind of mid piece possible .

And if you won't sit up straight .

You know , you need to kind of tame it down like that .

And then you're gonna take the , the the edge side of the knife and just apply really , really light pressure and just turn it just spin as you're applying pressure , the skin of the ginger will just peel away because there's a moisture layer in between the skin of the ginger and the actual body of the ginger and peeling ginger actually is purely cosmetic .

Uh You really can't taste the difference between peeled and unpeeled .

So for this cut , I want that blades of grass cut .

So again , if it rolls tame it eighth inch slices and then I'm gonna stack these eight inch slices on top of each other and cut these eighth inch slices .

Also kind of known I like to call this cut the blades of grass cut too .

So if you can see they're perfect little blades of grass and I'm going to leave them like this .

If you wanted to mince just cut these perpendicular and you get the perfect mince .

All right .

So ginger done .

So I know this cut looks really fancy and uh don't let it intimidate you if your cuts don't come out like this .

No big deal .

Um I just want small and uniform .

It's gonna work perfect in this dish .

Last thing we're gonna cut are scallions .

Mongolian beef is a great dish because it really gives you a lot of knife practice .

Those of us that are hardcore knife heads .

We can get in there and uh and get a lot of work done here .

Um With scallions , I take the root side off , I line them up .

I take the top side off .

I'm gonna show you how to cut scallions two ways .

That'll look really nice in this dish .

So let's separate kind of the whites from the greens with the whites .

I just want you to buy a slice them into one inch and all that means is this is perpendicular , put a little angle on it and keep them about one inch .

And we're gonna cook these like veggies with the onions and the bell peppers .

Let's take the greens now and create a beautiful garnish .

So all I want you to do is kind of stack them .

Uh remember perpendicular is no bueno in the kitchen .

You want a nice little angle and then with this little bias slice , it creates a really pretty garnish and um I always do them this way just because they look better and you always eat with your eyes before you actually eat the food and the food looks great .

It's gonna taste better , right ?

Scallions are done .

I just need to make my sauce and we're ready to go .

I want you to think about Asian food as five flavors , right ?

Hot sour salty , sweet and savory .

So we're basically mixing uh these sauces that equate to those flavors .

So oyster sauce is the champion , right ?

That's gonna be your kind of every flavor sauce except spicy .

That's gonna have a nice sweetness , a good savoriness , uh , a touch of acid in it .

Um , and , and if you had to go into a , a culinary knife fight with just one sauce , oyster sauce would be my sauce for sure .

It really can do just about anything .

Hoisin sauce .

Adds a beautiful kind of sheen and sweetness , soy sauce gives us a nice kind of uh salty backbone .

A really nice kind of support .

And then uh vinegar is always going to lighten and brighten a dish .

So I'm not looking for a lot because I'm not going for that kind of sweet and sour flavor .

But I want acid to really kind of bounce and round out these flavors .

Few more things , garlic , ginger corn starch and water together to get it to kind of make a gravy and stick to the beef .

You want to make a slurry and all that means is equal parts corn starch to water in there and then mix it all together .

So corn starch is what thickens sauces , but it needs to go in by way of a slurry because cornstarch right into food will basically just clump up .

It's such a fine textured powder .

It will not blend into thick sauces .

So you need to thin it out first with water and then introduce it into your sauces that way .

And that's what we call a slurry just like that .

And although it's cloudy in the bowl , cornstarch activates at 100 and 60 to 180 degrees and clarifies and gets beautiful and shiny .

I know you're watching me eyeball the amounts .

Um , I've made this dish about a bazillion times before .

Follow the recipes and it'll come out perfect every time .

All right , family .

Let's get hot .

Let's get that walk hot and let's fire this dish .

Ok .

Wok is getting hot .

Let's pull the beef out of the fridge .

That's been marinating .

What you're gonna notice is the beef is actually absorbed that water , the corn starch .

So it's gonna feel kind of dry .

But once it hits the pan , you'll see it gets beautiful , shiny and tender .

So if your beef needs more time to marinade , feel free and just hit pause and come back to it .

But if you're ready to go , let's get cooking .

So this is a brand new fresh walk from the market .

Here's a really cool tip .

If you fire the walk and you start to smell kind of like a little plastic smell .

That means this walk has a little plastic coating on it .

And it's very simple to remove .

Take a big fat tablespoon of kosher salt , take some paper towels and just carefully , very carefully , just kind of scour the inside of this walkout and that helps kind of polish down any of that kind of coating that .

The walk might ship with and then get rid of that salt .

There you go .

A walk that is prepped and ready to use for the first time .

Um , ok , so we're gonna cook this in kind of two steps .

We wanna get the beef cooked first because the beef is in such big pieces .

We're gonna cook that first .

Drain off the oil and then continue cooking the rest of it .

So I'm gonna use a little bit more oil than I need .

Dump out any excess .

And you want this pan pretty ripping hot , the hotter this pan is the less the meat's gonna stick .

So , very gently slide that beef into the center because it is a hot pan .

You don't want this to splash , get that oil around and let this beef really sear up on its own .

This is where you're OK using more oil because all I'm gonna do is drain off the excess that I don't need in a Chinese restaurant .

They're actually precooking this beef and oil first before they bring in the rest of the components .

Every good cook , you have two jobs , fold the food over and then scrape down any bits that are sticking .

If you stay ahead of it , you won't get any burned bits in the pan .

So I want you to just brown the exterior of this beef and take it to about medium rare because I'm trying to account for the cook time of what's left .

So I've got big old pieces of onions .

I've got big old pieces of bell peppers and they're probably gonna take about 4 to 6 minutes .

So I need to get this beef from 4 to 6 minutes of perfectly cooked if that makes any sense .

Thank you .

Use the surface area of the walk to make sure you're getting as much searing as you can with this beef .

And again , I've used flank steak here .

But if you want to get really fancy and use like a filet mignon or tenderloin , that's also a beautiful way to go with this dish .

So , yeah .

OK .

OK .

Course almost there .

OK .

That , so uh the beef is medium rare and I want to drain off any extra oil I really don't need .

So I'm gonna give it a final really good scrape and then just drain off any excess oil that I might have .

All right back to the pan aromatics first .

Let's add the garlic and ginger .

We cut to really get those flavors to open up .

So it's time to add the ginger and garlic because the beef is medium rare .

You can tell it's medium rare because it's light pink in the middle and brown all around .

So bell peppers and onions were cut to the same size .

So they're gonna cook at the same time .

Yeah .

So I cut way more bell peppers and onions than I needed because I really wanted to show you that technique .

But I'm just gonna reserve these for the next dish and all you're looking for visually is uh a browning of the edges of the onions and the bell peppers don't overcook it .

Ok .

All right .

Let's get the scallions in that we left large and I'm gonna stir this sauce before I add it to the pan because I want that corn starch to be really mixed in .

And this is the perfect time to add some dried chilies .

And all I'm doing now is kind of bringing that sauce to a boil , getting that sauce to that 160 to 180 degrees .

So it clarifies and really cooks into a really beautiful glaze .

That Mongolian beef is definitely one of those um Chinese American classics that existed for a long time .

And a lot of people kind of try to bust my shops about authenticity .

I mean , I'm an Asian American kid born in the United States .

This dish is authentic to me , you know what I'm saying ?

So , you know what ?

I have no issues calling this an authentic dish .

So the sauce is actually starting to bubble and thicken and that's telling me I'm really close to done .

All right .

Um Beef is cooked through the veggies are seared , but they're not kind of limp and falling apart and the sauce is sticking to a beautiful gravy .

Oh my God .

Let me look at that .

Sometimes you'll see this served over um a bunch of crispy noodles or a bowl of rice .

I kinda like to serve this family style with assortment of other dishes .

A little bit of garnish .

Wow .

I'm starving now .

Oh , there it is .

Uh , a beautiful hot platter of mongolian beef .

Hm .

That marinade makes this beef really feel like filet mignon .

Uh , the sauce .

That's sweet .

Savory marries perfectly with those kind of earthy bells and onions .

Well , there it is my friends , Mongolian beef .

Um , thanks for cooking with me today .

Um , I really hope you had as much fun as I did and we'll see you next time .