The Family Table: Slow cooker Chinese
Occasionally, I get a craving for something that just won’t go away no matter how disciplined I may have become.
Instead of beating myself up for temporarily disembarking from the healthy eating train, I try to find a way to make whatever I want in a way that doesn’t completely blow my healthy resolve but still delivers the taste I want. Most recently, it was a craving for Chinese food that got to me.
As a general rule, I know going to the buffet is a world of bad.
There are too many temptations there that will derail even the most disciplined resolve, and while I eat less than I have in the past, I know that I will overeat.
And so began an experiment of sorts, a way to cook a hands-off dinner that would satisfy my need for Chinese food, while giving me the flexibility to control how much bad stuff went into it.
For me, one of the things I’m constantly vigilant about is the level of sodium in a given dish. I come from a long line of folks with high blood pressure, and myself have been on medication to control it since my mid-20s.
Several months ago, my doctor told me my pressure was well under control, and I could try to go off the medication. He also cautioned me that there was a strong likelihood that I’d need to get back on it.
Seventy percent of people who get their pressure under control will find that it creeps right back up once they’re no longer medicated, he said.
Unfortunately, I’m in that 70 percent, and found myself back on the pills despite carefully watching my sodium intake and continuing to eat right and keep moving.
Despite being back on them, I still watch, so when I have a chance to eat something I enjoy, I try to do it with a measured approach.
Carrots, broccoli and shredded slaw rounded out the chunks of chuck roast I used to make this dish (I didn’t have flank steak, and wasn’t about to go back to the grocery store). While everyone else in the house had theirs over noodles, I ate mine over a bed of a raw slaw mix.
All in all, it was a good way to satisfy my craving — though Mike and I both needed to add extra red pepper flakes to ours.
Now if I could just find a way to get the delicious taste of soy sauce (even the low sodium kind) without the ill effects of all that salt …
Jennifer Garofalo is the Herald-Standard’s news managing editor. Contact her at jgarofalo@heraldstandard.com.
Slow cooker Mongolian beef
3 pound chuck roast cut into bite sized cubes
1/4 to 1/3 cup cornstarch
5-6 carrots, peeled and cut into big chunks
4-5 cloves garlic, minced
1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
1/2 cup water
1/3 cup brown sugar
A couple healthy squirts Sriracha
2-3 green onions, thinly sliced for serving
Real rice, cauliflower rice or noodles for serving
Steam in the bag broccoli for extra veggies
Coat the beef with cornstarch in a large bowl. Combine liquids, sugar and garlic in slow cooker. Toss in beef and carrots and stir until completely coated.
Cook on high four hours; low six hours. When you’re ready to serve, take the lid off of the slow cooker and give it a good stir.
The sauce should have thickened up. If it is still too thin, remove the beef and veggies and make a slurry with a little cornstarch and water.
Stir that in, and let the sauce simmer (on high) for a few minutes until it’s reached the desired consistency.
If you’d like to add steamed broccoli, do so after the sauce has thickened, and you add the beef and carrots back to it to coat.
Serve over rice or noodles, or over a bed of raw slaw mix.