I like to cut as many corners on this as I can — that’s what makes it easy:
For a fairly small time and energy investment, I can get two or three dinners and maybe a lunch or two out of this meal.
The fresh ingredients are 1-1.5 lbs of thin-sliced beef (I buy it pre-cut into strips and marked ‘for stir-fry’), a bag of carrot chips, roughly half a pound of either snow peas or snap peas (I like snap peas better), five or six jumbo white mushrooms (or a comparable amount of your favorite mushroom), and a few big cloves of garlic (or more if you really love garlic).
On the nights that I make this, the first thing I do when I get home from work is marinate the meat with lots of soy sauce, a good-sized splash of red wine (any cheap red wine is fine — even cooking wine is good enough), and plenty of powdered garlic and powdered ginger. I stir it all up to make sure it’s coated and add more of the garlic and ginger powders, then stir it up again and maybe add even more. I cover that and put it in the fridge, then take a nap (see, I told you this was easy).
When it’s time to cook, start the rice, or get your spouse to start it because you had a rice cooker when you were single and now you suck at making rice. While that’s cooking, rinse your peas and chop your mushrooms and garlic.
You’ll need some tongs, and a spatula for stirring. Put some oil into the wok and it turn it to med-high/high. I like canola or coconut oil. Coconut oil is good for you and adds a nice dimension to anything you cook in it (I say this as someone who won’t touch shredded coconut, so if you think you’re a coconut hater but you like the smell, try the oil). Add the beef and its juices, then pull all the pieces of meat out when they have cooked and set them aside in a dish. At this point, add the garlic and let it brown a little, then add the carrot chips.
The carrot chips take a while — I usually let them cook seven minutes until they’re just al dente. Add the mushrooms and peas, mix them well to get the mushrooms coated in the juices that are at the bottom of the wok, and let that cook for about two minutes, stirring occasionally. Finally, add the cooked meat back in (along with the juices that have leaked out), mix it well, and serve it up on the rice. Dig down to the bottom of the wok with a spoon and drizzle some of the juices over each serving.
If you try this, I’d love to hear how it turned out!
