Beef Teriyaki

Mmm, good dinner tonight. I know, beef teriyaki wasn't on the menu for tonight, it was supposed to be earlier this week, but it's been a hairy week, dinner-wise, so things got made totally out of order. No big deal, though really. This beef teriyaki recipe is so good that my 15-month-old even enjoys it, and he's a little picky (wonder where that comes from). He wound up covered in rice by the end of dinner, but he enjoyed himself immensely.

This recipe is really quite simple, once you have the ingredients on hand. I generally keep a good amount of sirloin (my personal favorite choice of steak cut for this dish) on hand in the freezer - if I can get a good deal on it, I'll buy a ton and wrap it in Press `n Seal Freezer and bag it up. One of the key ingredients in this recipe is a bit exotic, and may not be something you have around the house: mirin. You should be able to find it in the Asian or International Foods aisle at your grocery store. It's kind of like a sweet version of sake. Some cookbooks I've read say you can substitute dry sherry for mirin, and personally, I think that it tastes totally different than mirin. Go get the mirin. Really. Oh - and you can use fresh grated ginger, if you're into that, I just use the jarred version because I'm lazy.

Type A Mommy's Beef Teriyaki

Printer-friendly recipe

1/2 cup soy sauce
1/2 cup sugar
2 tablespoons mirin
1 teaspoon ground ginger
2 teaspoons cornstarch
1-2 garlic cloves, minced
2 pounds steak, sliced thin in bite-size pieces (I use top sirloin mostly)
1 tablespoon vegetable oil

1. Slice up your steak. Try to make the pieces the same size, where possible.
2. Heat up your vegetable oil in a 12-inch skillet, over medium-high heat until smoking.
3. Put your soy sauce, sugar, mirin, cornstarch, ginger and garlic cloves together in a small bowl and stir. Set aside for now.
3. Cook steak in batches. Do NOT crowd the pan - it will result in rubbery steak. Cook each batch for about 2 minutes per side. Set aside cooked steak in a bowl, and start your next batch. I usually wind up doing about 4 batches, all in all.
4. Once you've cooked all your steak, turn the heat down to medium and stir up your teriyaki sauce, then add to skillet. Stir sauce around skillet, making sure to scrape up any browned bits left in your skillet.
5. Simmer sauce over medium heat until thickened, dark and syrupy. This should take as little as 5 minutes, or as many as 10. Once thickened, add meat and any accumulated juices back to pan and stir well. I usually let the meat simmer in the sauce for one minute or two while I finish preparing my rice to go with. Serve immediately.NOTE: Feel free to add any stir-fry friendly vegetables you would like to this dish. Onions and broccoli go especially well with this.