Mongolian Beef Recipe (2024)

FAQs

What is a substitute for cornstarch in Mongolian Beef? ›

I use corn starch in this recipe, so swap out for arrowroot or tapioca starch if you need it to be gluten free. An easy swap for the soy sauce is gluten free tamari.

What's the best cut of beef for making Mongolian Beef? Restaurants often slice up flank steak for this type of stir-fry. It's also a great choice for beginner cooks, because the grain on flank steak is really, really obvious, which makes it easy to make sure that you're slicing against the grain.

Dilute or Bulk Up Your Dish

Diluting your dish with a splash or two of salt-free liquid or adding more vegetables, pasta, or meat, will help a dish that's too salty simply because you are increasing the overall amount of whatever you're making.

That's because restaurants use baking soda or cornstarch to tenderize the meat. It's a process called velveting beef. While the beef is tender (artificially so), it's lacking true beefy flavor. I gave up ordering Mongolian Beef years ago once I figured out how to make it better at home.

Browning adds more flavor to the gravy and gets rid of the raw flour taste. You're basically making a roux. We find that a flour-based gravy holds up better and reheats better later, which is why we tend to prefer using flour over cornstarch to make gravy unless we have a guest who is eating gluten-free.

Szechuan Beef vs Mongolian Beef

Szechuan Beef has a sweet and spicy flavor with added chili peppers and Szechuan peppercorns. The Szechuan peppercorns has a distinctive tingly numbing sensation when eaten. Mongolian beef has a mild and much simpler taste, making it a kids' favorite, outside of broccoli beef.

Velvet the beef: The velveting technique involves tenderizing, marinating, and a quick searing of the meat. To tenderize: Sprinkle with baking soda (the secret Chinese meat tenderizer). To marinate (a quick marinade): Add basic beef marinade and mix to coat evenly. Let marinate for 15 minutes or up to overnight.

American versions of Mongolian BBQ are often pretty sweet (this doesn't sound like an authentic recipe). More soy sauce (or more of everything but the sugar) would cut the sweetness. Chili oil would certainly give it heat, but isn't going to temper the sweetness much.

While there are several ways to velvet, a pound of meat needs about two teaspoons of cornstarch and two teaspoons of oil, says Leung. You may also include two to three tablespoons of water. For beef, add a 1/4-teaspoon of baking soda for tenderizing. Additional seasonings are optional and vary from recipe to recipe.

What does cornstarch do for beef? ›

Try the Cornstarch Method by coating your meat with cornstarch mixture or (slurry) and leaving it for 1/2 hour before cooking. This mixture will provide a protective barrier which helps to seal in the moisture to prevent over-cooking and the meat becoming tough. NOTE: Corn Starch is not the same as corn flour.

Tips For Velveting

Rinse well before cooking: After velveting the meat, you have the option to rinse off the baking soda or slurry to prevent clumps in your stir-fry.

Arrowroot powder (a.k.a. arrowroot flour and arrowroot starch) delivers thickening results that are very similar to what cornstarch offers. Arrowroot makes a beautifully shiny sauce, and you can use the same amount of arrowroot that you would cornstarch.

Cornstarch is also used in a classic Chinese cooking technique, known as velveting, that makes for that signature, soft and silky texture of stir-fried chicken. For this technique, you can always substitute potato starch or rice flour.

Rice Flour

A common ingredient in Asian cuisines, this flour, made from finely ground rice, is a favorite substitution for regular flour as a gluten-free option. It's also a perfect cornstarch substitute as well. Rice flour is particularly good for baking and creating a crispy batter for deep-fried foods.

Potato starch is the cornstarch substitute favorite of associate food editor Kendra Vaculin. A light white powder extracted from crushed potatoes, it's an almost flawless one-to-one swap for cornstarch in all applications.