(bright music) - [Announcer] This is a production of PBS Charlotte.

(upbeat music) - Well, as you can see here at "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table," we just got back from soccer practice, and as tired as everybody is, and as easy as it could be for me to order some takeout, I think what I'm gonna do is I'm actually gonna make takeout at home.

So, join me inside and I'm gonna show you a great way to do takeout in home and save yourself a couple dollars.

(upbeat music) Hi, my name's Tim Harris and welcome to the "Dapper Dad's Dinner Table."

Today we've got a great meal planned for all of the busy parents out there.

You've juggling jobs, taking your kids probably to practice, after school sessions and everything.

So, I've got a recipe here that I think that'll work out just great.

And it's gonna be something that instead of ordering takeout, you can have done in just about the same amount of time as it takes to order takeout and probably for a fraction of the cost.

Today we're gonna make a speedy Mongolian beef, almost like having takeout right here in your house.

We've got some sirloin, we've got some green onions, we've got some garlic, some ground ginger, and some soy sauce.

We're gonna make a wonderful sauce to go with this.

We're gonna serve it all over some rice.

So, first let's get started and we'll go ahead and we'll take a look at the beef right here.

The one thing that we want to know and we wanna be sure about doing is making sure that when we slice this beef, we're gonna slice it against the grain.

This is typically not a super tough cut of meat, but it's definitely a tougher cut of meat, not a super tender.

So, by slicing it against the grain, we're gonna be able to make it very tender and also be able to go ahead and get it browned in our pan very nicely as well.

I'm gonna go ahead and trim some of this off, some of this fat and silver skin off.

I'm a dad, I work a full-time job.

I've got two kids, I've got a wonderful wife.

Our kids, we try to keep 'em busy, we try to keep 'em entertained.

We're doing soccer, gymnastics, karate, and you know, simple little things like this at home, make dinnertime just a little bit easier and it gives us a healthy option that we can all kind of just sit around the table and then talk about how our day went.

Now I'm gonna go ahead and cut this beef.

I'm gonna do it about a quarter of an inch thick all the way around or all the way through I should say.

And then we're gonna go ahead and transfer it to the bowl here and I'll teach you the secret to make it nice and crispy in the skillet.

Now, I'm sure many of you can relate and you've got your children, they do a lot of different activities at school, whether it's with sports or it's just after school activities.

And you know, like this just makes it a lot easier in the afternoons after getting back from soccer practice like we did today to have something ready to go and get some warm food in everybody's belly.

Now, to start off, I'm gonna take this beef.

I've got my spatula over here, and I've got a mixture of corn starch as well as baking powder.

And we're gonna go ahead and put these over there and coat the meat thoroughly.

This is gonna help us get a nice crisp, and it's also, the baking soda is also gonna help tenderize the meat while we set it aside and we prepare our sauce.

Now, once you've got all sides of that coated, we're gonna go ahead and set that aside.

Now, we're gonna go ahead and step over and make the sauce.

We're gonna add half a cup of brown sugar, half a cup of soy sauce, about half a cup of water.

We're gonna add some about a tablespoon of dried ginger, or ground ginger, I should say.

Some rice wine vinegar and some garlic.

Now, to save yourself some time, you can use fresh garlic, which is always great, but I also like to just use some pre-minced garlic.

It just saves time.

We're gonna go ahead and whisk all of this together.

Okay, I'm gonna set this to the side and I'm gonna move this outta the way and grab a fresh cutting board.

We've got some green onions.

Now, the green onions, they serve twofold.

They're gonna act like a little bit of a garnish at the end, but we're also gonna use it as an aromatic to make sure that we've got lots of flavor.

Flavor is the key here, and you want to get that nice kind of like, you know, agent takeout flavor.

Now, one of the fun things that I learned researching some recipes and things about this, is Mongolian beef actually has nothing to do with Mongolia.

It is actually more of a Taiwanese dish that originated, as they say in about the '50s in what they had was Mongolian barbecue restaurants in Taiwan.

And this of course then evolved into the Chinese-American food that we know it as today is Mongolian beef.

So, it's not really that it's from Mongolia or anything like that, but it's more or less that they, it represents those bold flavors in Mongolian cuisine.

But of course, by the time it has come over to the States, it's gonna be completely more to, you know, a sweeter palette.

That's why we've got the brown sugar in there.

Now, when we get here, we're gonna stop and we're gonna kind of separate the bright green or the dark from the white.

Now, the white is what we're gonna use to cook with, the white and the dark green parks because it adds a lot of more aromatic flavor.

Think of it, this has got the more onion flavor of the green onions as opposed to like the sweetness at the tops.

All right, I think the kids will enjoy this.

They do love a good hibachi, so hopefully they will enjoy this as well.

But we'll find out, won't we?

I don't know if your kids are as picky eaters as mine can be sometimes, but we do have a rule in this house that you have to try everything at least once and you can give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down or two thumbs up as far as how much you like it and then we can think about whether we're gonna cook it again after that and everything.

So, okay, now that we've basically got everything prepped and ready to go, we're gonna turn around and get our Trusty skillet nice and scorching hot.

All right, now that we've got our skillet going, we're gonna go ahead and get a little bit of oil in there and get that nice and hot.

We want it to be scorching hot so we get a nice crispy on our beef and everything in there.

Now, typically a wok would be the best for this, but I don't have a wok and I know not everybody has a wok, so a good Trusty skillet will do just as good.

Skillet's great, it's gonna hold a lot of heat.

And if you don't have a cast iron skillet, the best non-stick frying pan that you have, that'll work as well too.

While we're letting that get hot, I'll go ahead and tell you a little bit about myself.

I grew up, I was a military brat.

I got to travel all over the world with my parents.

My dad was in the Air Force, and I've got to experience a lot of different cultures growing up.

I've lived in Germany, I've lived in Holland, I've gotten to visit Denmark, Belgium, Luxembourg, France.

I grew up in four different states before I settled down here in the South.

So, I think that helped develop a lot of who I am and the different flavors that I've become accustomed to just growing up and being around.

Let's see what we've got going here, yep.

Always use a pot ham, a pot holder with that, so we're good.

We're gonna go ahead and add some of our beef in.

Now, we wanna do this, we wanna layer 'em.

It's gonna get kinda loud and it might get a little poppy, so be careful.

But we wanna layer these in and we also may wanna make sure that we don't crowd the pan.

I'm gonna go ahead and turn it back up a little bit.

And what we're looking for is just to get a nice crispy sear on all sides.

We're not gonna cook them all the way through 'cause we've still got the sauce and that's what we're gonna use to finish cooking them often.

Now, don't worry if you've missed a step or if you've missed an ingredient, everything's gonna be available online.

I encourage you to give it a try.

Put your own spin on it.

Use what you've got in your pantry.

A couple of pantry staples that work great for dishes like this to keep around, soy sauce, any sesame oil, any chili paste, you can always finish off with sesame seeds.

These are all great things, and if you don't normally have those, I'm sure I've got in a drawer somewhere.

I've got a Ziploc bag with all of the condiments that I got from the last time I ordered out.

You can use that stuff as well.

Another great thing about cooking things like this is that it's not just one meal, it makes great leftovers for lunch the following day if you have some leftover, and it's pretty easy.

Now, we're getting a nice brown on there.

So, we're gonna go ahead and start to turn, to sear, you wanna make sure that we get all sides evenly, and that's what we're looking for right there.

Nice crisp right there, which is being helped out by the baking soda and the corn starch that we put on there.

You can smell that, it's coming off.

Yeah, that is some crispy beef.

Now, we really haven't gone as far as put too many spices in there just yet.

That's where our sauce is gonna come in.

It's gonna be packed with a lot of flavor, and I'm also gonna show you how to get the aromatics to get that started here in just a moment.

Let that go a little bit longer.

As those are finishing off, we'll slide those to one side of the pan and start with some more just to keep things rolling here.

As I put a little more in, I'm gonna increase the heat a little bit because that's gonna take some of the heat away from the pan.

And the thing about the reason why we don't want to crowd the pan, is we want it to get crispy on all sides.

When you start to crowd the pan like that, it takes the temperature of the pan down a little bit as well as it starts steaming the meat more than it is actually searing it.

Almost fully seared on the other side there.

Yep, coming along nicely.

The beef isn't going to be cooked all the way through.

Like I said, we're gonna finish cooking it when we get it, but some of these are coming, they're getting nice sear on both sides, so I'm gonna go ahead and pull them and let them rest here.

And as you can see, we've got a nice sear on both sides and that's just gonna let us get a little more room in the pan that we can go ahead and start off with our second one.

Go ahead and add a little bit more oil.

- I myself, I love cooking because it's almost become like a hobby.

It's given me a little bit of release, a little way to be creative, to try new things.

I mean, everybody's got to eat, right?

But you know, when you prepare it yourself sometimes and you learn about the dish and you learn dishes and recipes from friends or just seeing something online, my favorite is if I see a recipe online or something on social media and I go think to myself, man, that looks really good, I wanna learn how to cook that.

You gotta remember, I'm not a chef.

I did not go to school for this.

I've just picked this up along the way.

Trust me, I've burned a lot of things as well, but I'm sure we've all done that, right?

Like grandma said, you've gotta break a couple eggs in order to make an omelet, and I firmly believe that, so.

Yeah, cooking has kind of come like a bit of a release, relax for me.

I did study art.

I was, I did art for the longest time, but as I graduated from college, I started working in the, you know, the corporate workforce and I didn't have that much time for my art anymore.

So, this has kind of become that creative release for me to try new and different things.

And hey, at the end of the day, everybody's got to eat right?

So, these are coming along nicely here.

I'm gonna stop fiddling with 'em 'cause that's another thing that I know a lot of us tend to do, is sit there and turn it and turn it and turn it.

Actually just let it sit there and get a good sear on it and then flip it over and start on the other side.

Now, this dish, it doesn't have to be beef.

You could substitute this with tofu if you'd like.

You could use some chicken, you can add some other vegetables in and make your own stir fry out of it.

It's all about what you and your family really like and what you guys enjoy.

I'm gonna go ahead and pull the rest of this now.

Let it rest for a moment.

It's got a nice sear.

All right, now we're gonna continue on with the same skillet.

Now, we're gonna leave all those little bits in there.

We're gonna add a little bit more oil.

We're gonna add the white parts of the onions and we're gonna let those go for just a moment, about a minute and a half just to release some of the aromatics.

It's gonna add a lot of flavor, put some more in there.

I'm gonna turn the heat down just a little bit because with the corn starch that we've already got in the pan, the sauce will thicken up really quick.

A good thing when you're doing any sort of a stir fry, as you saw I had everything portioned out.

Stir fry goes very quickly, so it makes it easy.

Once you've got your beef going, you don't have time to start chopping green onions.

So, go ahead and get everything set up ahead of time.

So, now with that we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna add the sauce that we made.

Remember that had a lot of sugar in it, so that's gonna be kind of, it's gonna get sticky and it's gonna go kind of quick.

And we're just gonna stir this around to let it thicken up a little bit.

Now, what I'm doing also with the spatula is I'm scraping up all those little brown bits that were on the bottom of the pan from searing the beef, that's just gonna add a little more flavor to it.

We'll let this go for just a few.

So, you know, while you're watching along, think about, what's your favorite thing?

What's your favorite takeout?

And how can you make that at home and you know, save some time, save some money, and have fun doing it?

Now, we're gonna go ahead and we're gonna turn this back up to just slightly above a simmer.

You see how it's going there?

We don't want to go and we're gonna put the beef back in, and this is where it's gonna finish cooking and it's gonna get nice and flavorful from our sauce.

And it's also gonna thicken up.

At this point I'm also gonna go ahead and add in the rest of the green onions.

Actually it probably work better with the spatula, with the tongues.

Turn it down, and we're gonna let that simmer.

If you're wondering how your sauce is, you can always take some and see how it sticks to your spoon.

That's the number one way to see how thick your sauce is.

And while you're always doing it, I always encourage everybody taste while you're cooking.

Let it cool off a little bit first.

Nobody needs to burn themselves.

Man, that taste just like takeout from down the street.

All right, we're gonna turn that down, let that simmer.

Actually in a minute I'm gonna remove it from the heat, but we want our beef to be nice and tender.

Now, my kids love rice.

Maybe your kids love noodles or they love Ramen noodles, even Lo mein noodles.

We're gonna have this over some rice today, garnish it with a little bit of sesame seeds and I think it's gonna be a great meal.

So, stick with me here, we're almost done.

We're gonna let this finish off in the sauce 'cause we didn't, we wanted to make sure we got a nice sear on it without cooking it, making it super tough.

So, this is gonna make in sear and all that, sear and lock in all that flavor as well as give a little bit, you know, that crispy beef flavor that you're used to in most Asian beef dishes.

Most of my travels, although I do love Asian food, most of my travels with my dad and my family in the military has been over Europe and everything.

But one thing I do notice, no matter where you go in the world, you can always find Asian food.

And I guess that's why it's almost similar to a comfort food for most people.

Even though that we all know that, you know, the Chinese food and the takeout that we get here in the States is a loose interpretation of the original.

But it's still, it's very consistent no matter where you go and you know what you're getting and everybody's got their favorites.

All right, I'm gonna go ahead and turn this down and remove it from the heat and just let it rest there.

I'm gonna let it sit there for just a couple of minutes while we get our rice plated.

We've gotta talk about what the most important thing was, I think, and it was the sauce.

The thick, glossy black sauce.

Without the sauce, it wouldn't have really been Mongolia beef, it would've just been beef strips and rice.

But the sauce, it just kind of gives that deep umami flavor, a little bit of salty, a little bit of sweet.

Let's kind of recap what went into it.

Started off with soy sauce, that's gonna give us that deep salty umami base.

It's kind of a really big deal in all Asian cooking, especially a lot of the sauces because of the flavors that it brings.

To that we added the brown sugar, which is gonna give us our sweetness.

It's gonna sweeten up the sauce, give us that balance between salty and sweet.

It's also gonna help as it's simmering in the pan to make that sauce nice and sticky.

To that we had some garlic as well as some ginger.

I prefer to use fresh garlic, but most of the times we, we've got powdered garlic or powdered ginger.

It works just as well.

And we also had some rice wine vinegar to add to it.

Rice wine vinegar, it's something that's I think you should try to look into.

It's a great staple to have for all Asian cooking.

You can definitely make a lot of different sauces with it.

What makes it different than our typical white vinegar is that it's from fermented rice, whereas white vinegar, distilled vinegar, as we see in the grocery stores, is made from fermented grain.

So, it does kind of have that kind of little bit of alcoholic vinegar smell and flavor.

But unlike the, I think it's a lot milder than the typical like white vinegar that we most of us have in our pantries.

Other, speaking of that, some other items that I think are kind of kitchen staples that you can get at any grocery store in the international section or in the sauce section is some mirin or cooking wine, sweet cooking rice wine.

It's another way you can elevate your Asian dishes and sauces, your Asian-inspired dishes and sauces.

And then I always like to keep some hoisin sauce.

Hoisin sauce can replace what is typically called oyster sauce, which is made from oysters.

So, if you have anybody that has a seafood allergy or is just more on the vegan lifestyle, hoisin sauce would be a great replacement for oyster sauce.

Other sauces that are great Asian-inspired sauces, teriyaki sauce, a good stir fry sauce, I'm gonna have some recipes.

Please check out pbscharlotte.org and I'll have these recipes on there.

And one that I think is really cool and my kids kind of like it as well and it tastes great with everything including chicken and even chicken nuggets is a Thai Peanut Sauce.

Once again, something that can be made very easily from household ingredients and kitchen staples that you may already have in your pantry.

So, for my simple homemade Asian-inspired Thai style peanut sauce, it starts out very simply with some creamy peanut butter.

I've also got some minced garlic as well as some ginger.

We've got some of the rice wine vinegar, some honey for sweetness even though the peanut butter has a lot of sweetness with it as well.

And of course soy sauce.

And then if you'd like, I got my, your favorite hot sauce there.

So, let's begin.

To the peanut butter, the creamy peanut butter sauce, I'm going to add about two tablespoons of soy sauce.

We're gonna eyeball it here just a little bit.

We're gonna go ahead and start to mix those in together, get those going.

You can warm up the peanut butter just a little bit for a few seconds in the microwave and make it just a little bit easier, but it's going along just fine here.

Now, to that, I'm going to go ahead and add a couple cloves of garlic, and some ginger, fresh minced ginger as well as some honey.

Let's go put the most of the soy sauce in there for fun.

And then a little bit of the, I'd like to do about a tablespoon of the rice wine vinegar.

I'm just gonna give a little bit of bite, and then feel free to add, if you'd like a little bit of heat, feel free to add in some of your favorite sauce.

This is actually my Little Dude's Sauce, my son, you know, he says, got the peppers out back that he grows, so we use those to make a sauce.

Now, what we're gonna do is we're just gonna simply mix this all together, whisk it all together.

Now, the important thing about sauces is to taste as you go.

Got a spoon here.

So, we're gonna put in there, that's good.

If it's too salty, add a little more sugar.

If it's too sweet, go ahead and add a little more vinegar to cut through that or add a little more of the soy sauce.

Get this stirred up so you get a nice consistency.

Like it says, you can even put it in the microwave to make it a little more creamy.

Now, this is great for chicken sautes or any chicken, some Lo Mein noodles and things like that.

If you don't have these in your pantry, like I said, they're not gonna break the bank and you can get them at just about any grocery store.

And the spices when it comes to the ginger and the garlic, you can use powdered.

And like I said, it's the key to sauce is tasting as you go.

You don't wanna just throw everything in there and then try a sauce and be like, man, this is really salty, or gosh, this is too sweet or too spicy.

So, those are my tips for making some sauces.

I think rice just is kind of ubiquitous with most Asian dishes.

So, that's why I've gone ahead and done this.

I've gone ahead and steamed rice in my rice cooker.

Now, if you've watched "The Great American Recipe" on PBS, I was on Season 3, I was one of the contestants, and I wasn't really lucky with my rice cooking.

I wasn't good when I did it in a pot, when I used the insta cooker, when I used the rice cooker, I always got flake from my rice.

But you know, I really don't care because like I like my rice a little thick and clumpy and sticky.

And especially if I'm gonna have a nice sauce like this over it, I think it's gonna be awesome.

So, we'll get that there some nice just plain steamed rice, and now our Mongolian beef.

We will get a couple pieces.

We've got enough, we'll get a couple pieces for everyone, just like that.

One of the really cool things about being on "The Great American Recipe" was getting to meet people from all over the country.

I mean like the title, it's "Great American Recipe."

We are a melting pot.

We'll go ahead and add some sesame seeds, and finishing it off with a little bit of green onions.

One of the greatest things about being on "The Great American Recipe" was getting to meet everybody and working with my castmates.

Although it was a competition, it didn't really feel that way.

It felt like we became more brothers and sisters at the end of it.

Everybody just trying to do the best and represent where they were from to the best of their abilities.

By the time that it takes us to order takeout, we've prepared it here at home and we're about to enjoy with our family.

And there you go, very simple.

Some crispy beef with a wonderful Mongolian sauce over some steamed white rice.

Like I said, you can do the same, you can add some chicken.

If you wanted to add some more vegetables to it, you could add some green beans, you can add some broccoli.

But we're just going straight forward.

Another great thing about this, if there's any leftovers, I guarantee I'm probably gonna take this to the office with me tomorrow.

Just put it in a little container, pop it in the microwave for a couple minutes and it's gonna be just as good tomorrow afternoon or the next day.

The next step, I'm gonna go ahead and make a couple more plates and you'll get to meet my family and we'll do the ultimate test to see if they like it.

And now dinner's done and it's my favorite part of the day.

It's actually just sitting down with my family and having dinner.

(upbeat music) (muffled speech) How's it look guys?

- Good.

- Good, all right, well, dig in, try it.

- Just give it a little taste.

You have to tell daddy what you could.

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) - Hmm, that was really good.

- Yeah, what do you think?

Two thumbs up.

- Two thumbs up.

- All right, I'll take it.

- Wow, that's a big win in this house.

- You're the pickiest one.

- Awesome.

- So how was soccer day?

- Good.

- Good?

Any goals, any assists?

- Two goals.

- Nice.

- Wow.

- What else did you guys practice?

- I don't remember.

- You don't remember?

What about you, how's school?

- Good.

- Good, just good?

- Did you meet any new friends?

- Yeah.

- Yeah?

That's fun, and how was swimming?

- Good.

- Yeah.

(upbeat music) - Monday was good too, so thanks for asking, guys.

- [Announcer] A production of PBS Charlotte.

(bright music)