Recipes

Pepper Steak

Is Pepper Steak an American dish or Chinese? I always see it on the menu at Chinese resturants so I was wondering if they invented it. If so, I think we have Americanized it over the years and made it our own. My parents have made it since I was a kid and over time I have developed my own version of that dish. I hope it makes you proud daddy. For such is my "baby of the family" curse to try and make people happy. Ok, back to the Pepper Steak.

Here is the cast of characters.




We have some garlic, tomatoes, peppers, onions, beef broth, red wine, cornstarch, Lawry's seasoned salt, Chipotle chili powder, Cumin and London broil.
Also, not shown, cause I'm human and fallible, are salt, pepper and rice. And I decided to use flour instead of cornstarch. I'll tell you more on that later.

First I chopped all my vegetables. Here's the peppers, well the orange one at least. I didn't take a picture of the green one.

Here's the onions and garlic.

I also chopped the tomatoes but I don't want to throw a whole bunch of pictures of me cutting things up at ya, so I skipped putting that one in here. And now the Meat!

I chopped up about 2lbs of london broil into 1 in pieces. Then added it to pan set on Medium High heat with about 1 Tbls of oil. Which is what I did here.




And I add the spices. Lawry's season salt, cumin and chipotle chili powder. You could use regular cayenne chili powder if you had that in your pantry.



Now the veggies. Add the peppers, onions, and garlic. Hold off on the tomatoes for just a few minutes.



Now, let them cook down for a few minutes. And enjoy the smell permeating your kitchen.. MMMMMMM



Well, Emma didn't think mommies peppers smelled good, she thought they were "stinky". Poor child, she is so uncultured.


Now add the flour.  I know the picture up top shows cornstarch, but I decided to use flour this time. But if you don't want to use flour, continue on with the rest of the recipe and after it has simmered for about 15 min add a slurry of 2 Tbls cornstart mixed with water to make a paste. Stir till it starts to boil and thicken. But I added flour, so back to that. Stir the veggies around to let their juices soak up the flour and it helps get out some of the starchy flour taste.


After the flour has cooked for a minute add the tomatoes.




After a few minutes the tomatoes will let loose of their juices and mix with the flour. BTW, please remember to peel your tomatoes first, unlike I did, if you don't like rolled up skins in your food.

Okay, do you see that beautiful brown stuff in the bottom of the pan? That is what life is all about. Well,second to bacon. And maybe butter, too. But anyway, see that stuff? That is FLAVOR baby!





So we are going to incorporate it into a sauce by adding red wine. Scrape up the bits off the bottom and they will melt into the wine as it heats up. See?




Try to make sure the "help" doesn't drink it all! Thats my husband, the lush!



Next add the beef broth.




Awwwww, isn't that a beautiful thing! At this point I added some kosher salt and pepper to taste.



Now simmer it for about 20 min and you will notice that the sauce will thicken and develop in flavor. The meat and veggies will soften and man oh man will you be eatin' soon! Take this time to make your rice. At least that is what I (and the chinese, btw) eat it on. Is there anything better?



After the rice is done, the pepper steak should be too. Get ya out a ladle and scoop up some of that goodness, pour it over your rice and dig in!



Go ahead! Try it. Let me know what you think.