Beef Chop Suey

littleturtle's Note:

Easy to make, and also very adaptable. Chop suey is the classic Chinese-American dish. This one's mainly a vegetable dish with beef added for extra flavor.

• Total Time: 40 mins
• Prep Time: 25 mins
• Cook Time: 15 mins

Ingredients:

Servings: 3

• 1/2 lb lean beef
• 2 teaspoons oil
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch
• 1/4 teaspoon pepper
• oil, for stir-frying
• 2 small onions, finely chopped
• 1 stalk celery, cut diagonally
• 2 carrots, finely chopped
• 1/4 lb fresh mushrooms, washed & sliced
• 7 ounces canned bean sprouts, drained and rinsed
• 1/2 cup bamboo shoots, rinsed & cut into thin strips (fresh if possible) or 1/2 cup water chestnut, sliced (fresh if possible)
• 3 slices fresh ginger, crushed
• 1/2 cabbage, finely chopped
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 4 garlic cloves, crushed
• 1 cup water
• 4 teaspoons cornstarch
• 2 teaspoons soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon sugar
• 2 cups cooked rice

Directions:

1. Cut beef into thin slices and marinate in a mixture of the next 6 ingredients for 10-15 minutes.
2. Heat a little oil and saute the onions& celery until onion is transparent, and set aside.
3. Stir-fry the carrots, mushrooms, sprouts and bamboo individually for 1 minute each (order doesn't matter)& set aside.
4. Saute the ginger for 1 minute, add the cabbage and cook for another minute.
5. Add the rest of the vegetables, mix well and add a tsp of sugar and 2 tsp salt or salt and sugar to taste.
6. Remove vegetables and set aside.
7. Heat a little oil and saute the garlic.
8. Add the marinated beef and cook for 2 more minutes.
9. Mix together the remaining 4 ingredients and stir into the beef.
10. Cook until cornstarch is clear and pour beef over the vegetables.
11. Serve chop suey over rice.

Reviews

[Donna Matthews]

This was good but it was a lot of work. Maybe i would get more efficient if I did it more often. Because I was using a cheap cut of stewing beef, I cooked it in my little crockpot with a can of beef broth and some red pepper flakes for most of the day, which turned out very moist and tender. I then used the broth from the meat instead of the water. The part that I found cumbersome was the stir frying of each of the vegetables individually. I was also not quite sure how you are supposed to crush ginger. I put it through my garlic press and the ginger flavor was quite pronounced. I ended up with quite a mess in the kitchen to clean up. DH liked it a lot; DD and DS preferred to just have the egg rolls and egg drop soup that I served along side.

[Chef #190057]

I've resolved to learn to cook Chinese food and started with this one and now I'm hooked! I'm glad I made a double batch because I could eat this for a month. The only thing I did different was I added more than double the amount of salt to the vegetables. Guess I was going for that restaurant MSG taste.