P.F. Chang's Mongolian Beef Copy-cat Recipe

We have made this dish at our house multiple times, but this particular post is kind of a sad one for me...not because of the food, the food is AMAZING, but because we are moving in a couple of weeks to California.  We made this last Sunday at my parent's house to celebrate my mom's birthday.  I've always been very close to my mom, I'm the only girl with 4 brothers, so she's always been like a best friend to me, and I feel very blessed because we've lived within 25 minutes of both of our families since basically forever, and we get to do Sunday dinners with my family a lot.  That will be coming to an end soon for us...No tears for now though!  On to this delicious recipe!

Ingredients:

• 1 Tbsp finely chopped garlic
• 1/2 tsp grated fresh ginger root
• 1/2 c. soy sauce
• 1/2 c. water
• 2/3 c. dark brown sugar (I have used regular brown sugar as well, and it works just fine, the sauce will just be a little bit lighter of a color)
• 1 lb beef flank steak
• 1/4 c. corn starch
• 1 c. vegetable oil
• 1 bunch green onions, cut into 2" lengths
• 1 Tbsp oil
• Cooked rice

Directions:

Slice the flank steak 1/4" on the diagonal.  I forgot to take a picture of that part...sorry, I was too excited...  After you have sliced all of the meat, coat it in the corn starch and let it sit for about 10 minutes.  Here we have a picture of my younger brother demonstrating for us...

Here is the meat waiting to be fried up...just so you know, if it looks like there is a lot more than 1 lb of meat here, it's because we tripled the recipe so we'd have enough.

While the meat waits you can start on the sauce.  Heat the 1 Tbsp of oil in a saucepan over medium heat.  Add the garlic and ginger, and cook for about 30 seconds.  (If you've never used ginger before, (I hadn't until the first time I tried this recipe), buy a very small piece.  Slice off the skin on one side and use a cheese grater, on the very fine side, to grate the ginger.  I have a picture below for you, the ginger is in the measuring spoons so you can see what it looks like.  Once you've got all the ginger you need you can just leave it on the counter and the side you grated will 'heal' itself and grow the skin back.  Awesome, I know).

Pour in the soy sauce, water, and brown sugar, and raise the heat to medium-high and cook for about 4 minutes.  The sugar will desolve and the sauce should start to boil.  Add the green onions and let it cook for another 30 seconds or so.  Remove from heat and set aside.  Isn't that color beautiful?  Love it!

Heat the 1 c. oil over medium heat and fry the meat.  It will cook pretty quick because it's so thin.  Drain cooked meat on a paper towel.

Serve meat over cooked rice and topped with the sauce. 

Enjoy!!

Recipe from Allrecipes.com