I don’t personally follow a lot of other blogs, I like to just search around and look at my convenience, but there are a few of them that I keep up with all the time. One of those is a fellow WordPress foodie, Nick, over at FrugalFeeding.com. I have a special place in my heart for the British, as my brother (from another mother) is from Wigan, and I have many other friends from the UK that I just adore. He has some truly amazing recipes and you should definitely take the time out to read some of his posts and recipes.

Last week he posted this one for Chinese Crispy Beef with Noodles. When I saw it, I knew immediately I had to try it. In fact, I went to the store that day to pick up the ingredients.

At the grocery store, my intention was to pick up some bean sprouts, bamboo shoots, sweet chili sauce, etc. However, I had taken the 4 year old and the 14 year old with me on this particular trip and it didn’t turn out as I had planned. One of them was asking me if I would buy him over 50 million different items in the store, all things that he knows I am not going to purchase. The other one I ended up having to put in the cart because she would not stop touching every single item on the shelves. Then she had a meltdown in the cart somewhere between the ethnic and bread aisles and I left out half the stuff I needed. My kids are normally pretty well behaved, but apparently the planets were out of alignment or aliens poisoned the organic gummy bears, or who knows what happened, but they were making me crazy. I honestly just wanted to throw myself down in the middle of the store and start having a tantrum. It would have embarrassed my kids and someone may have come and picked me up to take me to that special place with padded walls and really great meds!

Just kidding. Maybe.

Anyway, on to the star of this post, crispy beef. This meal is absolutely amazing. The beauty of it is that you can make this with any sort of Asian noodles you want and you can throw in any of your favorite ingredients. I normally shop at this awesome little Asian market nearby to get all of my special sauces, noodles, Asian veggies, etc. but I haven’t been in awhile and I wasn’t able to get there before I made this. I did find these noodles in the store and they were actually really good.

As I looked at his recipe and then started going through the pantry to make this, I realized all of the things I had forgotten during my trip to the grocery. I ended up not having sweet chili sauce, so I used this awesome Korean barbeque sauce I had in the fridge. I had carrots, peppers and green onions, so those are the only veggies I used. You will want to julienne the carrots and peppers. I have this handy dandy product from Titan that makes a perfect julienne. It was a gift I received in a two pack with a vegetable peeler. They are two of my favorite kitchen products.

Remember, I just used the ingredients I had on hand, you can use anything you want to in this dish. The next time I will be going to the grocery alone so that I can find things like bean sprouts and bamboo shoots! You could even throw some slivered almonds into the mix.

Asian Style Crispy Beef

• 1.5 pounds Flank Steak
• 2 eggs
• cornstarch
• soy sauce
• Asian sauce, whatever your favorite is (I used the Korean barbeque, sweet chili is great too)
• ginger powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper
• 4 carrots, peeled
• 4-5 red, yellow and orange snacking sweet peppers
• 3 green onions, sliced thin
• oil for frying the beef, I used sesame oil

You don’t have to do this step, but since I had the time I cut up all the beef and seasoned it and let it marinate in the fridge for a couple of hours before dinner.

Slice your flank steak into thin strips, against the grain, and then cut each strip into two or three pieces.

Then lay all of your pieces of beef into a shallow pan and season generously with ginger powder, garlic powder, salt and pepper. Then drizzle on some soy sauce, you don’t have to put on a lot, just enough to give them a light coat.

Next you will cut up the vegetables. Start by cutting the carrots and peppers in a julienne style. I cut my strips in three pieces after I did this. Slice up the green onions and set aside.

You can do the batter step two ways, either put the corn starch in one bowl and the whisked egg in another, or just whisk the eggs and add in the cornstarch to the same bowl.

I had one bowl for the egg and dipped in the pieces of beef and then dipped them into the cornstarch until they were fully coated.

In a large skillet, add just enough oil to cover the bottom of the pan, maybe about a 1/2 inch deep. If you have a deep fryer you could also use that. Place the battered beef in a single layer in the pan, as many as you can fit without them overlapping. I cooked mine about 2 minutes on the first side and just over a minute on the second side. Remove them from the heat and set on a paper towel lined plate.

I am going to pause here for a minute to tell you that this beef was so amazing that I could not stop eating it. It was almost like mini chicken fried steak pieces, but with an Asian flare. Holy Moly, they were amazing.

Since I didn’t put too much oil in the pan to start with, I didn’t need to drain any oil out once the meat was done. You only want about 2 tablespoons in the pan for the veggies. To the oil I added in several dashes of soy sauce and the Korean barbeque sauce, along with some ground pepper and a couple of shakes of ginger powder.  I scraped up all the tasty bits in the bottom of the pan and then threw in the veggies. Cook them for about 3 minutes or just until they soften up.

Then I crumbled up the noodles and added them to the pan. The ones I used were pre-made, so I just needed to heat them through. Depending on what kind/style of noodles you use, you will need to follow the package directions and then add them to the veggies when they are ready.

I added a few more dashes of the soy and barbeque sauce so that all of the noodles were coated. You can throw the beef right into the pan at this stage and stir it all around until the beef is coated and warmed through. I kept mine separate because not everyone here was eating right away and I wanted to make sure that the beef stayed crispy for them when they got ready to eat.

I hope that you guys will try this, especially if you love food with an Asian flare. It is truly one of my new favorite dishes.