“Stir Fry” in a Crockpot!

I love stir fry: fresh veggies cooked in a wok with an Asian style sauce and served over rice.  But right now my nice large front burner isn’t working so well and using the crock pot regularly means more school gets done *and* we eat a hot meal.  I’ve been wanting some stir fry though so I tried this experiment today in my crock pot:

“Stir Fry in A Crock Pot, No Really!”

Ingredients:

• Beef ~ about 1 1/2 lbs cut into cubes (or strips).  I used round steak
• 3 cups of water
• 3/4 cup soy sauce
• 1 teaspoon ground ginger
• 1 teaspoon granulated garlic
• frozen stir fry veggies (I used a mix from Costco…maybe 5 cups?  I eyeballed it to be proportional to the meat)

What to do:

• combine beef, water, soy sauce, ginger and garlic in crock pot.  cook on high for 2 hours or about 4 hours on low (I usually use my high setting and 1 hour on high is about equal to 2 hours on low)
• after the 2 hours on high (or 4 hours on low) add the frozen veggies and continue cooking.  (1 1/2 more hours on high or until meat and veggies are tender or 3-4 hours on low or until done)
• I then thickened the sauce by mixing about 3 heaping tablespoons of cornstarch with about 1/4 cup water until smooth and then stirred into the crockpot.  You’ll want to turn the crock pot up to high (if it isn’t already) and cook for another 20-30 minutes.  This extra cooking is to thicken the sauce.
• serve over hot cooked rice

This was an experiment.  So how did it turn out?  Well here’s a couple of quotes from two of my guinea pigs:

“This tastes just like beef stir fry” ~ Tailorbear

“This had a really good flavor.  I liked it. “  ~ BooBear

My husband’s response?  “yeah, that works.”  which is about as close to a compliment as I ever get <grin>  So overall it is a success.  I got the Asian Stir Fry flavor I was looking for but without the work of standing and chopping veggies and standing and stirring at the wok.

A Helpful Kitchen Tip:

I buy meat in bulk packages when it goes on sale.  I find it very helpful if I trim and cube or slice the meat BEFORE freezing.  This helps the meat to defrost quicker and it saves me time when putting the food together in the crock pot.  I think this recipe would work great (maybe better) with thin beef strips but I had cubes in my freezer and those worked fine.