Kitchen Creations: Beef Teriyaki & Rice

There's a restauraunt nearby that serves Korean Beef Teriyaki over a spicy rice.  Well, it is delicious! It is also $13.  Which isn't very expensive, but it still isn't a price I am willing to pay every time I have a craving for it.

So I made it myself, and it's pretty delicious.  Now I'm going to share it, so I have a reference if I go a while without making it.  And because it's pretty good and cheap, and ya'll may like it, too! I've made this recipe twice for $7 - $10, and it feeds about 4 people.

The rice is super easy. I buy two boxes of jambalaya and follow the directions.  I just don't add any meat.

Then there's the beef: I buy whatever is on sale stew beaf or any steak.  If it's stew beef, make sure to cut it into small pieces, so the teriyaki flavor is in every bite.  Different cuts will have different flavors.  But if you're not a meat connosour, it isn't a big difference.  I season the beef with garlic powder, onion powder, and werchestershire sauce.  Just enough sauce that it's on every piece of meat, but not enough to wear the meat is swimming in it.

In a seperate bowl I make my own teriyaki sauce. I used to make teriyaki chicken a lot, so I have this down to a science.  I basically combine soy sauce and brown sugar until I reach my desired taste.  (If you don't have brown sugar, you can use a little honey and regular sugar.) You can make it to your own taste preference, so it won't be too sweet or too bitter.  You can also just use teriyaki sauce.

Then I drown the beef in the teriyaki sauce, and cooked it on medium in a skillet for about 30 minutes; I let the edges get slightly charred.

Plate the rice.  Top it with beef.

And it's an easy 30 minute dinner, that tastes like you went out to eat.

I made this scrumptious-ness twice in a week, and I am making it again next week.

Kitchen Creations: Catalina Wine "Mincer"

I may or may not have seen a few scenes from Step Brothers recently. And from that movie, comes this chicken was made up only because of the name. The inspiration behind it is it played on the "Catalina Wine Mixer". 

Although I didn't mince the chicken (which I originally planned to) to make the name make more sense. 

But it's sweet, tangy & BRIGHT PINK! (I couldn't get a good photo of how pink it really is.)  Seriously, who wouldn't love trying fuschia chicken?!  (The answer is everyone; No one was eager to try the chicken. Everyone gave me really skeptical looks and asked 26 questions about why it was pink before actually eating the chicken. But that's not the point, everyone also enjoyed it, so I'm going to share my recipe, anyway!) 

I cut up 7 chicken tenders into little nuggets, seasoned them (to taste) with onion powder, garlic powder, and pepper. Put them in a skillet, and added 1/2 cup of Catalina dressing and 1/8 cup of Chardonnay. I let it cook about 10 minutes on medium, squeezed 1/2 lime in the skillet, and let it cook another 10 minutes (or just until all the sauce has soaked into the chicken). Making sure to flip and move the chicken around every 5 minutes or so. That easy & that quick. 

Because the chicken is made with salad dressing, it's perfect for salad.  We had it on top of salad with cheddar biscuits, and it was an extremely satisfying dinner for everyone.  As long as there is some chicken in every bite, you don't even need dressing! (Of course, that didn't stop me from adding it, but to each its own, right?)

UPDATE: For lunch, I fried the leftovers, and they were pretty good that way too! 

Kitchen Creations: Fried Steak Ka-bobs

So I've been trying to find a way to cook steaks and give them the "grilled" taste when a grill isn't available.  I am slowly realizing that may not be possible, but I did find a super cool way to make them: frying them! 

And no, I'm not talking country fried; I mean regular fried.  And we actually enjoyed it more than skillet steak (which is our go-to for steak).  It's not the healthiest, but it is definitely something we will do again.  

Before I begin I'd like to add that I cooked both skillet and fried steak yesterday.  I had the skillet as back up (just in case frying it was a complete failure), but I ended up just comparing the two instead. 

The skillet is juicier and softer; it also had the possibility to range from rare to well

The fried is a bit more tender and more flavorful; it cooks really fast so it was well done after about 3 minutes. 

Here's how I made our fried steak ka-bobs!  (Ingredients are in bold)

First I marinated the steak for 4 hours - you can do more or less. More time= more flavor. Less time=less flavor.  I poke holes in the steak before marinating (see the picture below of me threatening the steak with a knife, haha!) , I think it helps absorb the flavor, but that's optional...

 I'm pretty sure any marinade will work for frying, but my marinade was sweet and tangy if you want to try: 

11/2 Worcestershire 

1/2 Cup Catalina Dressing

1 Cup Italian Dressing

1 Cap full of Lemon Juice

I also used this time to chop up our veggies.  We used green peppers and onions, because I knew that they would take the same amount of time to cook as the steak. Use whatever you want here, but note that if you're cooking potatoes they'll have to fry longer than the steak. 

When to do when it is time to cook:

1. Fill pan halfway with oil 

2. Heat oil- should sizzle and bubble when you add water or a pinch of flour

3.Take steak out of fridge

4. Take steak out of marinade, draining excess marinade off of it 

5. Season steak to taste. We are huge garlic fans. So we used garlic powder, black powder, and salt.

6. Once the oil is heated: add steak & veggies slowly

7. Fry around 3 minutes

8. Drain 

9 "Ka-bob" it however you like (put them on the skewers)   (: 

Adding the onion and green pepper gave my tangy marinade some extra flavor and cut down on the sweetness. It all mixed together really well; my husband even ate a few extra ones!  I now have an excuse to buy the stew meat when it's on sale.