I’m sure you all have heard of “Mongolian Beef”, a fixture at Chinese restaurants throughout the US. It’s usually beef strips that are stir fried, served with a savory sauce, along with peppers, onion, and green onion over rice.
But it’s not—go figure—remotely close to Mongolian. In fact, it wasn’t even invented in the USA, as most Chinese restaurant dishes have been. See “General Tso”.
“Mongolian Beef” was invented in Taiwan by a man named Wu Zhaonan. He was originally from Beijing, but fled to Taiwan after the Revolution. He set up a cooking stall but didn’t want to call it “Beijing Barbecue” for obvious reasons, so he called it“Mongolian Barbecue”. THAT has evolved to several chefs around a circular grill, more like a flat top or a plancha. The customer selects the meat, the vegetables, and the sauce, and a chef prepares it in front of the customer. These restaurants, called “Mongolian Grill” or with some variant of that in the name, had a bit of a trend in the US a while back, and there are many “Mongolian Grill” places today all over the country. In fact, there are at least FIVE within close distance to where I live in NW Indiana.
Regular (American) Chinese restaurants have chosen something similar to the original “Mongolian Barbecue”. Stir fried beef with onion and scallion in sauce served over rice. Sometimes they will add dried chiles to the stir fry. It’s labeled as “spicy” in most menus, but spicy does not necessarily mean “hot”.
But what happens when you want the flavors of Mongolian beef but also want meatloaf? I’ll let Chef John explain:
Now as I meal prep for a week, that dinky loaf Chef John prepared is only good for a couple of days. So I did what I do and upped the recipe. But there were flaws. Put a pin in that sentence. Anyway, here’s what I did.
First, I got a 3.6 pound package of ground 82/18 beef. Then I got a 1.36 pound package of approximately 80/20 ground pork. That already meant I was going to double the rice filler, egg, soy sauce, and what not. Except garlic and ginger. I used a whole head in this recipe splitting it between the loaf and the sauce. Plus I had fun with the squeeze tube of mashed ginger. More garlic is more better. Anyway, I started like the video by softening onion, garlic, and ginger in butter. Well, not exactly like the video. Chef John used oil to do the onion and additions; I used butter because butter. In fact, in the live chats Chef does after every new video, it’s become a running joke about my love and use of butter. Which is cool, because butter is one of the Four Food Groups, the other three being garlic, gravy, and cheese.
I also cooked close to 2 cups of rice. I added the rice instead of bread crumbs to the scallions, meat, onion mix, eggs, soy sauce, and S&P. And here was flaw part 0.5: I don’t think I mixed it well enough.
You all know what a meatloaf looks like, so I won’t show the uncooked loaf in the roasting pan. But I threw it in the oven at 350 degrees for 2+ hours. Closer to 3. Maybe longer. Saturdays are day drinking days for me, which means that time as a construct becomes rather wibbly.
As the loaf was cooking, time for more prep work. First the rice. And error (?) number one. I think I made too much rice. Anyway, I love the fragrant rices, and will almost always use either Basmati or Jasmine rice. When cooked, I add a TON of butter (like over a stick for 4 cups cooked rice), seasoned rice vinegar, furikake seasoning, and some sesame oil. This time I also added some Sichuan pepper hot chili oil. I make good side dish rice.
EDIT: Turns out I made just enough to spread out amongst the loaf. It was a big loaf.
I then took some thin sliced onion, some sliced poblano pepper (these had NO heat but good flavor though), and some long sliced green onion, and added them along with some black pepper to super hot oil in a sautee pan. I wanted them to be crisp, but with a little wok hay as best as I could do, and take the raw edge off.
Finally the sauce. I added a LOT of garlic and ginger to a pan with oil and sizzled it for a minute or so. Then I added brown sugar, soy sauce, red pepper flakes, a touch of water, and black pepper to a saucepan. I let that come to the boil (error 2. I should have let everything sizzle at medium low heat and only turned up the heat when I added the corn starch) then I added a corn starch slurry to thicken. And thicken it did. Almost TOO much. The final product, instead of a nice glaze consistency was almost at a THICK gravy consistency. But it was SO GOOD. I did forget one ingredient: Chef John added some ketchup to his sauce. I forgot. But to my mind, I don’t think it was needed. That sauce was delicious.
I had added some slivered onion to the loaf between a half hour and an hour of being finished. I added those onions to not only the sauce, but to the stir fried vegetables as well. Here’s the loaf as it came out of the oven
Individually all these things taste as you would expect. Except the meatloaf tasted like the stuffed pepper filling my Mom used to make. I guess that’s the flavor of rice instead of breadcrumbs as the binder/filler. Plus, it was a little looser packed than I normally do. Hindsight being 20/20, I probably should have added a bit more salt, and quite a bit more pepper. I forgot how much rice can absorb salt and stuff.
BUT—when all those elements come together—veggies and rice with the meat on top and with the sauce spooned all over it—WOW. It seriously tasted like a Mongolian beef at a Chinese restaurant. ESPECIALLY the veggies. As much as I love meatloaf and my buttered seasoned rice, the sliced onion, green onion, and poblanos were my favorite part, especially with the sauce. I would fully credit Chef John for the flavor, but I did make some deviations. I did, however use his base measurements and what not as guiderails. And that’s going to be a WFD essay topic in a future diary—forget your measuring spoon, season until the Ancestors tell you to stop. Look for that in a diary coming in 2024. If I can remember the topic, that is.
So the discussion question for the comments is: Have you ever made a dish at home that you tasted for the first time at a restaurant? And did your version taste like the restaurant’s?
Anyway, WFD at Chez Zen tonight is a slow roasted pork shoulder, seasoned with just salt and pepper, and some buttered noodles to go with it. And then the new Doctor Who episode.