I'm Janet Steffens, Extension Education for Purdue Extension Service in Floyd County and
this is Alyssa, a college student.
This afternoon we're going to make a delicious beef stir fry.
We're starting with a recipe for sweet and spicey stir fry with the ingredients listed
at the top.
The first thing that we've done is to assemble all the ingredients for this dish.
So, we both started by washing our hands thoroughly.
This is a very important food safety rule.
Alyssa is going to begin now by cutting up this lean piece of beef into strips for the
stir fry.
At the same time, while Alyssa is cutting the stir fry, and by the way we're cutting
against the grain, so the meat will be tender, I'm going to go over to a skillet that we're
using here and I'm going to spray the skillet with some Canola Oil, lightly, so that the
stir fry won't stick to the skillet and I'll explain to you what the ingredients are while
Alyssa's cutting the beef.
The first thing that we're going to do is brown the beef in the skillet.
We have made some rice and, in order to make our grains whole, as recommended in "My Plate"
for a healthier diet, we're using brown rice.
We've prepared the rice according to the instructions and set it aside because we will be putting
the stir fry over the rice.
We are going to brown this beef and then add some shredded carrots and cabbage.
You can also shred your own if you would like to, but this makes it a lot quicker with a
lot less mess.
We're also going to use a package of stir fry starter vegetables.
This will get us a nice selection of vegetables toward our servings of vegetables for the
day.
In addition, we're using some pineapple slices.
These were canned in 100% pineapple juice, no sugar added.
Alyssa, if you want to come on over, just bring the cutting board and leave the knife
there and we're going to turn the skillet on.
We're going to put the beef in the skillet.
As it cooks, Alyssa will show you the utensil she's using because the finish of the skillet
happens to be a non-stick finish and we don't want to scratch it with a metal utensil.
She's going to use a special utensil for this.
This dish can also be made on top of your stove in any skillet or pan that you have
so you do not need special utensils to make this.
Turn this up to the high setting and get this beef going.
Eating a home is a good way to save money on your food budget, in fact eating out even
at a fast food restaurant, is one of the most expensive ways to eat.
If you eat at home you can plan your purchases so you can get more than one meal out of the
food that you buy.
With this particular dish, the stir fry dish that we're making tonight, there would be
enough to serve two people for a supper and then some left for lunches the next day or
perhaps to freeze.
So now while Alyssa is cooking the meat, I'm going to go ahead and make a sauce for the
stir fry.
I'm starting out with one tablespoon of corn starch.
Cornstarch is a thickener, kind of like flour, but tends to make a sauce a little bit more
translucent.
That's what we're putting in here and then 1/3 cup water, and I'm going to scrape the
rest of the cornstarch out of the bowl to make sure I get it all.
Then 1/4 cup reduced, sodium soy sauce, this helps cut the salt down in your diet, and
in this case, there's about 30% less sodium then in regular soy sauce.
Put that in with the water and cornstarch mixture and give it a stir.
This will give it a little bit of an interesting flavor and a little bit of sweetness.
We're adding 1/4 cup ketchup and, in this case, we're adding ketchup that has no salt
added and only a little bit of sugar.
Ketchup, you have to watch if you're watching sugar in your diet because frequently there's
a lot of sugar in regular ketchup.
Then the last thing we're adding is 2 tablespoons of brown sugar.
That's going to give the sauce a little sweetness and also a little added color.
So, we're simply stirring this up, very easy to do.
This will be added to the stir fry as soon as the beef is ready.
If you're wondering what to prepare for lunch
and dinner, there are all types of places where you can get good recipes.
If you're looking for a "buy" on a recipe book, many times you can find good recipe
books at yard sales or book stores have sales on cookbooks.
Also, the internet is full of recipes for healthy lunches and dinners.
So, those are good places to look if you want to find some healthy recipes.
The beef is ready and Alyssa is going to add the other ingredients to the stir fry (adding
the bag of cole slaw and stirring).
Next, adding the bag of stir fry vegetables, frozen and thawed.
You'll notice a lot of nutrition and color in that dish.
Now we're going to add the pineapple.
After we added the pineapple, we added the sauce and from there it's just stirring it
around until it's brown and cooked (hot) through.
Then we're going to serve it over the rice and "Yum" you have all of your food groups
and you couldn't get anything nicer than this at a restaurant and we did this at a cost
of about $3 per serving.
Very good nutrition, very good price.