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Mongolian Barbecue

A grilled meat and vegetable dish served with a soy sauce.

From the Recipes Wiki (Fandom) · 23 ingredients
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Why it works: Star anise and parsley share more aroma than cooks usually use. They rank in the top 4% of all ingredient pairs, and 66 recipes mention both. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

The recipe

Ingredients

Contains: wheat, peanut, soy, sesame (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

  • SAUCE

Directions

Prepare the sauce

  1. Simmer the soy sauce, water, peppercorns, anise, and garlic for a few minutes in a saucepan.

  2. Strain the simmered mixture and allow it to cool.

  3. Add the wine, sugar, grated ginger root, 2 cups of scallions or leeks, and 2 cups of Chinese parsley to the cooled sauce.

  4. Refresh the sauce with the remaining scallions or leeks and parsley as cooking progresses.

  5. Taste the sauce to correct the seasoning.

  6. Divide the sauce among the guests' bowls.

Prepare the meat and vegetables

  1. Thinly slice the meats across the grain into 2 to 3-inch strips, and arrange the meat and vegetables on separate platters.

Cook at the table

  1. Place the cooking appliance in the center of the table, heating and greasing the cooking surface with salad or peanut oil.

  2. Guests put the meat and vegetables on plates and then place small portions on the cooking surface.

  3. Spoon some sauce over the grilling food, flipping the food over with chopsticks after about 1 minute on the grill.

  4. Cook to the desired doneness for each guest.

  5. At intervals, scrape off charred food bits with a spatula, reoil the cooking surface, and resume cooking.

Recipe from the Recipes Wiki (Fandom).

This recipe comes from the Recipes Wiki on Fandom and is licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Our formatting and summaries are shared under the same licence.

Steps grouped into stages for easier reading; the method is the source's own.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Star anise + parsleytop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together66 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Carrot + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together8,053 recipes

    Shared aroma: myristicin (spice, warm).

  3. Carrot + star anisetop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together117 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Lamb + beeftop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together896 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2,4-nonadienal (fatty, green).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together34,118 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Beef
Provides the main meaty texture and browns on the hot cooking surface.
Lamb shoulder chops
Adds rich, fatty flavor and tenderness when sliced thin and seared quickly.
Dark soy sauce
Supplies salty, savory depth and colors the sauce and the browning food.
Green peppers
Stay crisp-tender on the hot surface and add fresh, slightly bitter flavor.
Cabbage
Wilts and sweetens slightly while adding moisture and crunch.
Onions
Caramelize at the edges on the hot surface, adding sweetness.

The step that matters

Oiling and reheating the cooking surface between batches. Charred food bits and dry metal cause sticking and scorching. Reoiling restores a slick surface so the meat sears rather than steams, and scraping removes burnt residue that would taint later food.

Flavor stand-ins for the cabbage

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (lamb, beef, pepper, carrot, onion, peanut oil, rice):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Tomatobetter flavor fit
  3. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  4. Cabbagethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against lamb, beef, pepper, carrot, onion, peanut oil, rice. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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