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 the secret here is getting that beef super tender and i'm going to 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 marinate 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 wok because it's chewy but if we tame it with this marinade it has a really beautiful beefy taste these are the secret ingredients to marinade your meat at home like the restaurants baking soda that's going to help tenderize the meat there's a fancy word that chefs use called denaturizing 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 corn starch 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 going to have to add some water to distribute all of those ingredients and then we're going to 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 going to cut with the grain i want cubes here so let's say one inch by one inch so i'm going to 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 going to use half this flank steak now cutting against the grain simply means cutting 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 going to cut them into one inch pieces against the grain so i'm cutting cubes today 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 okay so the marinade is done so you really want to 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 cornstarch to really coat the beef well what's going to 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 hands 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's gonna work it's magic so give this marinade at least two to four hours all the way to overnight to really get it super tender so while that's marinating hit pause and come back when it's time to cook welcome back so the beef is marinating it cannot over marinate so we're going to 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 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 clothes 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 going to show you how to mince don't mince garlic too finely for the wok 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 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 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 when they come over also to keep your work efficient i like to put both bell peppers on top of each other cut them into planks and for this actually i think i'm going to cut large dice so 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 in the halves and once your halves are peeled you have a lot of options i could slice i could dice i can cut leone's but for this dish i'm just going to 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 top that grows up and this is the root which goes down 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 going to 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 going to 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 it won't sit up straight you know you need to kind of tame it down like that and then you're going to take the the edge side of the knife and just apply really really light pressure and just turn 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 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 going to 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 mints 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 i just want small and uniform it's going to work perfect in this dish last thing we're going to cut our 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 and get a lot of work done here with scallions i take the root side off i line them up i take the top side off i'm going to show you how to cut scallions two ways that'll work really nice in this dish so let's separate kind of the whites from the greens with the whites i just want you to bias 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 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 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 all 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 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 this a nice kind of salty backbone a really nice kind of support and then vinegar is always going to lighten and brighten the 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 a 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 cornstarch to water in there and then mix it all together so cornstarch is what thickens sauces but it needs to go in by way of a slurry because corn starch 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 160 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 wok hot and let's fire this dish okay wok is getting hot let's pull the beef out of the fridge that's been marinating what you're going to notice is the beef has actually absorbed that water the corn starch so it's going to 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 marinate 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 wok and you start to smell kind of like a little plastic smell that means this wok 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 wok out and that helps kind of polish down any of that kind of coating that the wok might ship with and then get rid of that salt there you go a wok that is prepped and ready to use for the first time okay so we're going to cook this in kind of two steps we want to get the beef cooked first because the beef is in such big pieces we're going to cook that first drain off the oil and then continue cooking the rest of it so i'm going to 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 going to 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 okay 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 pre-cooking this beef and oil first before they bring in the rest of the components every good wok 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 burnt 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 going to take about four to six minutes so i need to get this beef from four to six minutes of perfectly cooked if that makes any sense [Music] use the surface area of the wok 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 almost there so the beef is medium rare and i want to drain off any extra oil i really don't need so i'm going to 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 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 going to cook at the same time [Music] 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 going to reserve these for the next dish and all you're looking for visually is a browning of the edges of the onions and the bell peppers don't overcook it all right let's get the scallions in that we left large and i'm going to stir this sauce before i add it to the pan because i want that cornstarch 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 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 chops 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 um you know what i have no issues uh 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 i mean look at that sometimes you'll see this served over a bunch of crispy noodles or a bowl of rice i kind of 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 a beautiful hot platter of mongolian beef hmm that marinade makes this beef really feel like filet mignon the sauce that's sweet savory marries perfectly with those kind of earthy bells and onions well there it is my friends mongolian beef thanks for cooking with me today i really hope you had as much fun as i did and we'll see you next time you

Channel: Food Network

Views: 3,144,758

Keywords: food network, food, cooking, recipe, how-to, how to make, tutorial, cook, directions, ingredients, easy recipes, easy recipe, food network recipe, best, simple, quick, entertaining, Jet Tila, Jet Tila's Recipes, Jet's Recipes, recipes, Jet Tila's Mongolian Beef, Jet Mongolian Beef, comfort food classic, super-tender meat, Asian cuisine, Mongolian beef dish, Chinese food, Chinese recipes, Chinese cuisine, marinated beef, tender beef, dinner, dinner ideas, family meals, meals, main dish, FN

Id: lwsvHJni0PQ

Length: 21min 54sec (1314 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 26 2022