Slow Cooker Beef with Pea Pods~tender pieces of melt in your mouth beef with crisp crunchy pea pods. You'll love this take out at home recipe!
Do you like Chinese Take out? You are going to love this easy slow cooker beef recipe that tastes better than take out, and saves you some dollars. 🙂
Slow Cooker Beef with Pea Pods
Chinese is one of our favorite cuisines. My husband and I have an "in-date" every Sunday night. The kids are tucked in their bedrooms early, and we get take out for dinner and have some one on one time together. There's a little Chinese restaurant right down the street from us, and we practically order the same thing every week. Well, as the kids have gotten older, they've spoken up. "We like Chinese too! Will there be left overs?" Because I love them so much, I wanted them to have Chinese too. But, Getting take out for two, is way different than getting take out for six!
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So, I ventured out to make it myself. And this is one of the recipes I've done. Slow Cooker Beef with Pea Pods. Because this is made in the Crock Pot, it's super simple. You can start it in the morning and let it go all day. Easy weeknight meal! (This is the Crock Pot I use~love it!)
Start with 2 pounds of flank steak. First cut it against the grain in ½ inch slices. Then, cut it into bite size pieces, again about ½ inch size.
Put this all in the Crock Pot with a sliced onion, then make the sauce.
For the sauce, just whisk the ingredients (found in the recipe card below) together and pour it over the beef.
Set it and forget it! Until later.
A note about Fresh Ginger
I know fresh ginger root may not be something you keep in your house regularly, but I do highly recommend it for this slow cooker beef recipe. If you're concerned you won't use it in anything else, you can actually freeze it and pull it out again when you need it. But there are a plethora of things you can use it for. Salad dressings, tea, teriyaki sauce, and really any asian cuisine. If a recipe calls for ground ginger (dried) you can substitute fresh ginger as well.
To grate it, peel the skin off with a vegetable peeler or the edge of a spoon. Then you can use a ginger grater like this one. Personally, I think these work the best, and it's one of those kitchen tools that I never knew I needed until I married my husband and he had one. He used to live in Japan, so ours comes straight from there.
Alternatively, you can use a cheese grater that has the different size holes on it. Use the side that you would use to zest an orange, they are small holes, but not the smallest.
When you're about 20-30 minutes from dinner time, add in the pea pods. Serve over rice. There you have it, delicious take out at home!
Slow Cooker Beef with Pea Pods
Ingredients
- 2 pounds flank steak sliced against the grain and cut into bite size pieces
- 1 onion sliced
- ⅔ cup soy sauce *make sure you use gluten free soy sauce if you are gluten free
- 2 garlic cloves minced or pressed
- 2 tsp fresh ginger grated
- ¼ cup honey
- Zest of 1 orange
- Juice of 1 lime
- ½ tsp sesame oil
- ¼ cup cornstarch
- ½ pound pea pods
Instructions
- Place cut beef and onion in Crock Pot.
- Whisk together soy sauce, garlic, ginger, honey, orange zest, lime juice, and sesame oil.
- Pour sauce on top of beef mixture, stir to coat.
- Cook on high for 4 hours or low for 6-8 hours.
- When you have 30 minutes of time left, mix cornstarch with cold water and blend well, add it to the crock pot, stir and cover.
- When 20 minutes of time is left, add the pea pods and cover the crock pot.
- When cooking time is finished stir to combine, serve over rice.
Notes
- Use about half the onions, or skip them and use 1 teaspoon of onion powder
- Use ¼ cup swerve brown, OR 2 tablespoons Truvia or Gentle Sweet
- Instead of a cornstarch slurry, use Gluccomanan (gluccie in the thm world) to thicken the sauce if desired.
- Serve over broccoli slaw instead of rice. You could use a small amount of brown rice for an S helper, or a little more for a crossover.
Nutrition
Looking for more take out at home? Try these:
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Oh, double yum! This dish looks fantastic. Thanks so much for sharing your recipe with us at Funtastic Friday.
I think I just found an easy meal to make. It looks wonderful. I'd be honored if you would share on the "new" Share the Love blog party. I think my readers would enjoy your blog. You can find me at http://homecookingrecipebox.blogspot.com/ hope to see you sometime.
I live for slow cooker meals- this looks amazing!
Oh my yum!!! I am gonna add this to my weekly meal plan!
Oh you'll love it Erica!