Man Mondays: Beef Strips with Orange-Dijon Dipping Sauce

If you've read our "about us" section, you would know that I enjoy the Food Network. I like watching just about every show on it, but there is one person on the network I would actually adopt as my own grandmother and show up at her house for Sunday dinner every single week...if that was legal. Heck, I'll even adopt her last name if it means I can be her grandson. What do you guys think of my new name: Zachary Deen?

So, my grandmother, Paula, made these fantastic beef strips with orange-dijon dipping sauce found here.  I was watching one of her shows, imagining myself in her house, ready to give her a hug and eat her food when she whipped this gem of a recipe out. *Zach thinks to himself, Oh Grandma, you are so talented - I'm so grateful to be related to you.* Anyway, here is the recipe with some minor adjustments to give it more of an Asian flare.

Ingredients:

Beef Strips:

• 1 lb of beef steak (whatever variety you want)
• 1 cup of flour (with salt and pepper added to taste)
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 2 cups panko breadcrumbs
• vegetable oil

Orange Dipping Sauce:

• 1/2 cup orange marmalade
• 2 tablespoons soy sauce
• 1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1 tsp. fresh ginger, minced

Directions:

1. Remember the sandwichlets? Make sure to pound this beef down until it is super thin, just like that recipe, and cut into strips against the grain. {This whole process makes the strips much more tender.}
2. Completely coat each beef strip with flour, bathe in the egg, and then dip into the panko breadcrumbs. Set aside.
3. Heat up enough vegetable oil to create about 1/2 inch pool in the bottom of your pan. Grandma Paula gives a fantastic tip here: the oil is the right temperature when a panko crumb sizzles in the oil and doesn't burn too quickly.
4. As the oil heats up, turn your attention to the dipping sauce. Whisk the sauce ingredients together in a small saucepan, and bring to a boil. Once at a boil, turn off the heat.
5. Place each beef strip into the oil and let it cook for less than a minute on each side. That's all that is needed, promise. It will be tender, delicious, and most importantly - cooked.

Enjoy this fantastic meal. Sarah and I like to just finger-food (yes, that is now a verb) the strips and dip them in the sauce. However, if you are a little less caveman *Zach whispers something about snootiness* you can eat it with fork, knife, four napkins, and lightly pour the dipping sauce on your strips with miniature spoons coated in gold.

-Zach

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