Steak Teriyaki

Having my grill back has been wonderful. I cooked steak the other night and used the leftovers today for a very tasty steak sandwich.

This is a recipe I got from Em's dad, and there is not much to it. Marinate, grill, slice, and consume. You cannot go wrong. I do recommend you use good soy sauce for this recipe as it is the main component in the marinade. I use flank steak because it's darn tasty, lean, and is a great grilling steak. Being slightly lean helps avoid any flare ups and helps aid in slicing the meat extremely thin for serving. To avoid the meat sticking to the grill I lightly oil a paper towel and wipe down the grill grates after preheating.


A few things I have learned from grilling. First, get a thermometer. It's one of the most useful tools you can imagine when grilling. Second, avoid flipping meats over and over, you will only be disrupting cooking time and letting juices out. Last, if the meat is not cooking to your desired temperature but the bottom is starting to char, move it to a cold part of the grill. I usually have a direct and indirect heat section on my grill, and it truly helps avoid disaster.

Steak Teriyaki

½ cup soy sauce
½ cup sugar (white or brown)
6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 tablespoon fresh ginger, chopped
¼ cup olive oil
2 pounds flank steak

Combine ingredients for marinade and place in large zip-top baggie with steak. If the steak is two large cut with the grain into two pieces. Marinate overnight (you need to give it at least 12 hours).
Preheat your grill. Scrape down grates and grease slightly with a paper towel and canola oil. Remove steak from bag, letting excess marinade drip off, and place on grill. Cover and grill for about 8 minutes or until bottom side has nice grill marks. Flip steak and continue cooking until done, 125°F for medium rare (135°F for medium), about 8-10 more minutes. Remove from grill, let rest for 5 minutes, and slice thinly against the grain. Enjoy!

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My Two Timing Pork

I love pork. And I love stir fry. So this dish just makes sense. This remains one of my favorite Asian When I first tried this recipe (courtesy of my girlfriend's, oops wait, she’s a fiancée now!, dad), I had no idea why the pork was cooked twice. Why in the world would you call for cooking pork in water and then stir fry it? Well, after cutting the first step out when I prepared this dish (I guess you can just call it cooked pork then), I understood why. When you sear pork slices at a high temperature, a lot of their liquid is expelled (pork shrinks) and ends up in the stir fry oil, effectively steaming the rest of the dish and making it quite soggy. So your choices are mop up the liquid (and flavor) with a paper towel, or just cook the pork before hand. The latter, I have found, is a much easier option. Simple, actually, as you heat some water over medium high heat until it is slightly simmering, then add your pork cutlets in until they are just barely cooked. Strain and use in your stir fry. Now you can keep the liquid level down, which allows the sauce to do its thing and be awesome. To make the pork cook quickly, I like to slice mine thin (more surface area=quicker cooking).

Twice Cooked Pork

1 pound pork loin or loin chops, trimmed of fat and sliced thin
½ head green cabbage, cut into about 1 inch pieces
5 green onions, cut into 1 inch pieces

2 T peanut oil

1 T minced garlic
1 T minced ginger

¼ C soy sauce
½ C hoisin sauce
1 T chile paste with garlic
¼ c dry sherry
2 T water
1 T sugar

1 T cornstarch dissolved in 2 T water (mix just before using)
1 T sesame oil (optional, even more optional is the hot kind)

Mix together soy, hoisin, chile paste, sherry, water, and sugar, stir to dissolve and set aside. Bring a medium pot of water to a bare simmer, add pork and cook for about 2-3 minutes until loses pink color. Remove, drain and set aside.

Meanwhile, in a large wok over medium heat, add peanut oil. Once heated, add garlic and ginger, cooking for about 1 minute (stir often so they don’t burn). Add the cabbage and stir fry for around 2 minutes (don’t let it get too wilted). Add pork and sauce, cook until sauce boils. Add scallions, mix to combine. Add in cornstarch slurry and mix until sauce thickens. Finish with the sesame oil and serve immediately.

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Eat Your Vegetables

Parents, trying to get your kids to eat their greens? Failing? Then, try my new, improved, tested-on-my-girlfriend method that is guaranteed to make them eat vegetables like no tomorrow!*

Well, while I do not enjoy the sales pitch, that is pretty much what this is, a tasty way to get picky people to eat their vegetables. Picked this inspiration up from girlfriend's dad, who picked it up from Joyce Chen. Quick tangent- I need to come up with a name for the gf on this instead of using her name all the time and skewing her Google results away from her scientific awesomeness. Give me a few posts.

Back to the subject at hand. Stir frying vegetables is simple, quick, and mostly healthy. I say this because you do have to add a little bit of oil to the pan to start the process, but this is no worse than most of you who add butter to your steamed veggies. Now, what makes this method that much more awesome? Two things, crispness and the sauce. The veggies are cooked with a small (read: SMALL) amount of water after being toasted slightly, which lets them retain their crispness and not become soggy. The sauce is just good, especially if you are using good soy sauce.

There are very few tricks to this recipe. Do it in a wok if possible (better heat dispersion which leads to more even cooking), and if the sauce is a bit thick for you, add just a bit more water to the pan. One safety note is to make sure to dry your vegetables before you add them to the wok. Adding veggies that are full of water to hot oil can lead to splattering like you would not believe (or would like to clean up). In terms of vegetables, broccoli is my favorite for this, but green beans, snap peas, and asparagus work great, among others. Make florets from the broccoli and peel the stems, use green beans and snap peas as is, and cut the asparagus down to smaller pieces (but don't peel unless you like mushy asparagus or they are super woody).


1 pound vegetables
2 T peanut oil
1 T soy sauce
1 ½ T dry sherry
3 T water
1 t sugar
1 t salt
1 t Cornstarch dissolved in 2 T water

In a wok, heat the peanut oil over medium heat. Add vegetables in one batch and cook for about 2 minutes, tossing often. In a small bowl combine the soy sauce, sugar, salt, sherry, and water. Add directly to the vegetables, cover with a lid and cook for 2-3 minutes until vegetables are bright in color and just starting to soften. Add the cornstarch mixture and stir constantly until the sauce thickens. Thin with more water if desired.


* Not guaranteed, but it's worth a shot.

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Soy Saucing

I seem to be on a Southwestern kick lately, so I think it's time to switch gears. I want to talk about soy sauce. That black liquid you store in your fridge or pantry that probably says K-something on it. You use it for your stir fries and marinades, adding salt to your dish and some color, but that is probably about it. It's ok, you can admit it, your soy sauce is lacking, but then again, most people don’t even realize that. I lived my life 19 years before I found out. 19 years of bad soy! Looking back, it was almost like living in the dark (soy). Thankfully, my girlfriend's dad John turned me onto to a much more delectable fermentation.

Soy sauce comes in two varieties, light and dark. Light is more salty and has less overall flavor, used mostly for sauces, and does not really work well on its own. Dark soy has a less salty, more complex flavor bordering on sweet, is awesome, and works well as a dipping sauce. I actually prefer to only use dark soy because the flavor it lends is far superior to the light (that and I have more control on how salty I make something). Having two soy sauces would probably be beneficial for those wishing to cook Asian food 5 nights a week, but for those of us who only dabble, having dark around works great.

So let me move on to the product placement portion of this show. I refuse to buy soy sauce in a grocery store (or any Asian ingredient for that matter) for two reasons. 1) It is at least 2-3 times more expensive than in an Asian market and 2) the brands are mass marketed hacks. Yes, that's right, hacks. If you will take a moment, look at the bottle of soy sauce in your kitchen. Check out the ingredients. If it includes "caramel color", then its probably only good for staining shirts. Why? Because soy sauce is made in two ways, by fermenting actual soy beans (the good stuff) and by partially fermenting hydrolyzed soy protein (the hacks). By only using the protein, the color is not achieved and they have to offset this by adding caramel color. Sound good? That's because it's not!

So what can you do? I recommend buying a brand called Pearl River Bridge Superior Soy Sauce. It is the BEST I have found, and it's bordering on dirt cheap. A 1.8L bottle runs you about $4. yep, not kidding. Now that 16oz bottle of soy I paid 5 bucks for back in the day makes me want to bang my head against the wall. I really, really like the Dark Superior Mushroom soy, which is fermented from mushrooms and soybeans, giving an incredible earthy, complex flavor. The stuff is viscous too, not watery and light. If you buy some, give it a quick taste on its own. I guarantee you will be blown away.

Why make a big fuss about soy? Mainly because if you are going to cook with something, it pays to use a good something. Not to mention it's quite cheaper, supports local businesses rather than large chains, and has a wider variety of uses (see:upcoming post). So go ahead and give it a try, and hopefully you too will see the light in the dark (soy).

Addition: next time you are in your local Asian grocery, take a look at some other ingredients like rice and hoisin. You will be amazed how inexpensive they are and the great quality you can find.

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