A Similar Yet Different Stir Fry

Lately I have been in the mood for a stir fry with lots of veggies and some warm brown rice. Since we have an abundance of ripe green peppers in our garden I wanted to find a stir fry recipe that would use them as a main ingredient. I did a search and ended up deciding on an older CL recipe called Three Pepper Beef.

One of the great things about making a stir fry is that it cooks very quickly. Brown rice on the other hand takes about 45 minutes. So to get things started I got the rice going first. Then I sliced the flank steak (across the grain and very thin) and mixed it in a bowl with a little cornstarch, sugar, and salt. In a separate bowl I whisked together cornstarch, sugar, soy sauce, beef broth and soy sauce. I then prepped the rest of the ingredients by slicing the green onions, cutting the peppers and onion into thin strips (green, red, and yellow ones), trimming the sugar snap peas, and mincing the garlic and ginger. Then in a non-stick skillet I heated the oil (I used dark sesame oil instead of veggie oil) and sautéed the onions, ginger, and garlic. I then added the beef mixture and let it cook for a couple minutes. You then remove the beef mixture and stir fry the remaining veggies until they are almost done. Lastly you add the beef mixture and sauce into the pan and let everything cook together for a couple minutes until the sauce has thickened. Serve it over the rice.

I was excited to not only use the green peppers from our garden, but also to try cooking sugar snap peas for the first time. Unfortunately the green peppers from our garden had a distinct bitter taste to them. I am not sure if they were not ripe enough or if we they are simply not allowed to grow to their full potential in both size and flavor due to being in pots... I am still working on a green thumb. As far as the stir fry we both really liked it, however, Russ thought I had served it before... It was a new recipe for us, but I believe he was confusing it with the Ginger, Beef, and Green Bean Stir Fry I made not too long ago. While the two are similar I actually prefer the flavor of the sauce from the ginger stir fry over tonight's. Tonight's was good, but the sauce was a little too plain for me. I did however love the flavor and color of the red and yellow peppers and sugar snap peas in it. Maybe next time I'm in the mood for stir fry I'll combine the two recipes. Russ rates tonight's stir fry a 8.