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Our copycat P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef is pan fried and coated in a delicious sweet and savory sauce. It tastes just like the Mongolian beef entrée at the restaurant, but at a fraction of the price!
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Mongolian Beef is one of my favorite dishes in the world! And with this easy Mongolian beef recipe you can make five times the amount for the same prices as one order from P.F. Chang’s. I love the restaurant, but it can be a little pricey for what you actually get.
Don’t get me wrong, I will be the first to tell you that I LOVE dining out at fun restaurants or getting Chinese takeout from my favorite places. It’s nice to have someone else do the cooking for me once in a while. But this dish is so easy to make from home and it’s one that the whole family enjoys. Most people who have it say they actually like it MORE than P.F. Chang’s. It really does taste just like P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef!
Ingredients in Mongolian Beef
You start with simple, grocery store ingredients, and end up with a tasty, restaurant-quality meal! Here’s what you need for this recipe:
- Vegetable oil – four teaspoons. You will use more for frying down below.
- Ginger – fresh ginger lasts forever in the freezer! Mince or grate the ginger and save the rest for another recipe.
- Garlic – about two tablespoons of freshly minced garlic.
- Soy sauce – feel free to use regular or low sodium soy sauce, whatever you have on hand.
- One cup of water
- Brown sugar – one cup packed brown sugar. Use light or dark brown.
- Vegetable oil for frying – this is what you’ll use to sear the sliced beef.
- 2 pounds flank steaks – You can use strip sirloin steak, flank steak, skirt steak, etc.
- Cornstarch – for thickening
- 3 large green onions – sliced
Best Meat to use for Mongolian Beef
Flank steak is the best type of meat to use for this recipe, because it’s thin, it cooks up quickly and it stays tender in the sauce. However, you can use thinly sliced skirt steak or sirloin steak if that’s what you have on hand. The marinated beef is thin sliced and pan fried over medium-high heat in batches, so the outside is crisp and the inside is nice and tender. So yummy!
Cut Some Calories with these Tricks
P.F. Chang’s Mongolian beef is thin sliced and pan fried, as is the beef in this copycat recipe. But for a lighter version we have marinated the beef in the sauce and skipped the cornstarch coating. Then just cook the beef in the sauce in a pan over the stove. It still tastes wonderful, but won’t have that crisp coating on the outside. Skipping the frying process is also a time saver.
Add Veggies to the Dish
Add some veggies to the pan. Oftentimes after the beef is cooked, I will remove the beef from the pan, wipe clean, then sauté up some broccoli, pea pods, red bell pepper, shredded carrots, onions or baby corn and throw the beef back in. Then I will stir the sauce in with the beef and the veggies. This is a great way to get some added vitamins and increase your vegetable intake for the day.
Frequently Asked Questions about this Mongolian Beef Recipe
Mongolian beef sauce is a mixture of oil, soy sauce, ginger, brown sugar, and garlic. This tenderizes the meat and gives it a sweet, salty flavor.
You can serve this dish how P.F. Chang’s does by draining the excess sauce and serving it just coated in the sauce. Or you can reserve the excess sauce and spoon it over some rice.
Mongolian Beef freezes beautifully! I like to freeze it in the sauce, then thaw completely in the refrigerator before heating. Just heat it in a pan on the stove until hot, but not simmering, as you don’t want to risk your meat getting tough.
Yes. The marinade consisting of sugar, soy sauce (if using gluten-free soy sauce) and other ingredients do not contain gluten so this and other typical Mongolian beef recipes are gluten-free.
READ MORE: 10+ Date Night In Dinner Recipe
What to Serve with Mongolian Beef
Serve Mongolian beef alone with our Restaurant-Style Fried Rice or Panda Express Chow Mein or pair it with one or more of our favorite Asian style recipes for a huge Asian feast.
How to Make P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef
P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef Copycat
Video
Equipment
- Stove Top
- Fry Pan/Skillet
Ingredients
- 4 teaspoons vegetable oil
- 2 teaspoons ginger minced
- 2 tablespoons garlic minced
- 1 cup soy sauce
- 1 cup water
- 1 cup brown sugar packed
- 1 cup vegetable oil for frying *see notes above
- 2 pounds flank steaks
- ½ cup cornstarch
- 3 large green onions
Instructions
- Make the sauce by heating 4 teaspoons of vegetable oil in a medium saucepan over medium/low heat. Don’t get the oil too hot. Add ginger and garlic to the pan and quickly add the soy sauce and water before the garlic scorches. Dissolve the brown sugar in the sauce, then raise the heat to medium and boil the sauce 2-3 minutes or until sauce thickens a little bit. Remove sauce from heat.
- Slice the flank steak against the grain into ¼ inch slices. Tilt the blade of your knife at about a 45 degree angle to the top of the steak so you get wider cuts. Dip the steak pieces into cornstarch to apply a very thin dusting to both sides of each piece of beef. Let the beef sit about 10 minutes so the cornstarch sticks.
- As the beef sits, heat up 1 cup oil in a wok (or skillet). Heat the oil over medium heat until it's hot, but not smoking. Add the beef to the oil and saute for just 2 minutes, or until beef just begins to darken on the edges. Stir the meat around a little bit so that it cooks evenly. After a few minutes, use a large slotted spoon to take the meat out and onto paper towels, then pour most of the oil out of the skillet. Put the pan back over the heat, add the meat back into it and stir-fry for 1 more minute. Add the sauce to the pan and stir the meat around in the sauce until it is fully coated
- Remove the beef from the sauce with a slotted spoon or tongs onto a plate for serving and sprinkle on some sliced green onions. You can discard the sauce (this is what P.F. Chang's does) or save the extra sauce and serve it over rice with the beef.
Notes
- Recipe adapted from Top Secret Recipes
- Mongolian Beef freezes beautifully! I like to freeze it in the sauce, then thaw completely in the refrigerator before heating. Just heat it in a pan on the stove until hot, but not simmering, as you don’t want to risk your meat getting tough.
- For an extra kick of heat, add a pinch of red pepper flakes to the sauce.
Nutrition Information
Recipe adapted from Top Secret Recipes.
Totally trying this recipe this weekend! I am going to try swapping the water with beef stock and thicken the sauce. I love PF Changs and this recibe looks awesome!
Excellent recipe!!! Thank you so much for sharing this 🙂 My family LOVED it and it will be a monthly regular for us! We cannot afford to eat out so we really appreciate this treat. We enjoyed eating in over rice with extra sauce spooned on top! Thank you again!!
This was awesome. Took a little more time than I like to spend after work but the result was well worth it! WONDERFUL!!!!
just made this tonight. Easy to make, easy to eat. Loved the sauce!
That looks absolutely delicious! My mouth is watering, going to try this at the weekend.
R u girls are mongolians? Because this recipe is great! But I would add extra onions and garlic .
Thx.
Absolutely loved this recipe and so did the family. It will become a regular meal in our house. It is on the menu again this week. The only thing I am going to do differently is try a low sodium soy sauce. I am hoping it doesn’t change that taste too much.
Thank you for sharing a wonderful recipe!
My husband loves PF Chang's Mongolian Beef and he gave this 5 stars! We both LOVED it!!
I'm definitely going to make it again, and am wondering if anyone can help me figure out what I'm missing- I had 1 cup of vegetable oil left over at the end, that the recipe called for but I didn't use?
Also, anyone have tips for getting enough cornstarch without getting too much? I was left with kind of clumps all over the beef.
Thanks!!
Sarah – after reading your comments, and then the recipe, it looks like the recipe is a bit heavy on the amount of oil needed. It sounds more like you need 1 cup (to cook the steak) and 4 tsp. (to cook the ginger and garlic). Thus, the extra oil.
After reading the responses from the folks who made this, and LOVED it, I’m going to try it. I absolutely L-O-V-E P.F. Chang’s Mongolian Beef!!! And, this doesn’t sound all that difficult. Thanks for the feedback.
Thanks for the great recipe! I made a smaller version and used chicken instead of beef. Tasted delish! Had to post about it too…of course, siting you as the original source. 🙂
Thanks!
http://www.janeandeugene.blogspot.com
This is our favorite dish at PF Chang's, so I couldn't wait to try the recipe. I made it last night, and cannot stop thinking about how good it was. The comparison to the restaurant version is uncanny!! We will be having this again very soon!!
Ok, I'm ABSOLUTELY cooking this. I can never find decent Chinese in my area, but the prospect of doing it myself is always daunting.
I'm DEFINITELY cooking this tonight. I can never find a decent Chinese restaurant in the area, but am always a bit too intimidated to cook it myself.
We tried this last night and it was phenomenal!!! During the whole meal, my husband and I couldn't stop marveling at how great it turned out. I used round steaks since that's what I needed to use up but followed everything else to the letter. Definitely will make this again!
Did you cut the round steak in thin strips like the recipe asked for the flank steak or did you leave it big? Would like to try. Thank you for your help.
Tried this last week. I was super nervous frying the beef–something I had NEVER done before. The whole recipe was super easy and EVERYONE in my family absolutely LOVED it! The day after my 4 year old daughter was requesting it for dinner again. But sadly, my husband had taken the leftovers to work with him. Seriously, absolutely amazing.
This looks great!!! I will be trying this next week. Thanks! :0)
These look fabulous and I can't wait to it. I shared your recipe on my Must Try Tuesday blog post this week.
http://therickettchronicles.blogspot.com/2011/06/must-try-tuesday-june-28-2011.html
Thanks for sharing!
Wende
Mmmm…. PF Changs is one of our favs and when we moved to Fairbanks we no longer had access to it. My husband dreams about their Mongolian Beef… I am so going to have to try this even though I'm not a big fan of frying – so messy! Thanks for the recipe. 🙂
Looks delicious!
I'm now a follower. Can't wait to come back and look around.
When I was pregnant with my first, I could NOT get enough of PF Changs Mongolian Beef! I've search for 11 years for a recipe, I can't wait to give this a try tonight!!! Thanks
This recipe looks intimidating, but it is really not too hard and is soo worth it! Yum!
I’m in the UK. What does c stand for.
? We use grams and ounces over here. Thanks in advance. Karen
c = cup/cups (about 8 fl. oz)
Your innocence is so sweet… You’re all pictured under a tree by a stream, baby’s breath in your french braided hair… you know – all of that.
Surfing the internet with a laptop of course 😉
Christopher