Ingredients

• 250g beef (this was "muscle" aka stew beef becouse cheap, you can use better cuts but i don't think it's really worth tbh)
• 1 egg
• vegetable oil for frying
• enough flour to coat the beef

Sauce

• 7 tablespoons of dark soy sauce
• 4 tablespoons of sugar
• 1 tablespoon of garlic powder
• 1 tablespoon of ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon of chili flakes (powder works too)
• 1 tablespoon of balsamic vinegar
• 3 tablespoons of ketchup
• 1 tablespoon of olive oil
• 1 beef stock cube (should be around 10g i think, if it says without monosodium glutammate/msg it's not the cube you want)

Recipe

1. Cut the beef in small, thin strips (if you're using a better cut of meat you can make them bigger, otherwise as thin as you can manage pretty much)

2. Toss the egg into the beef and knead them togheter until all the meat is well coated in egg mixture

3. Put the flour and the meat into a box/bag and shake hard

4. Fry the beef on medium heat until it's mostly white/golden (shouldn't take more than 4-5 minutes)

5. Take the beef out of the oil and let it rest over a grill or something that allows the oil to drip away for at least couple minutes

6. Fry the beef again, this time on high heat, until it's dark brown (if you're using a good cut you can do golden brown if you want, but if you're using a cheap cut like me it really needs to be dark brown or you're going to end up with beef chewing gum)

7. Mix the sauce ingredients into a pan and reduce it on high heat until it starts to get somewhat sticky

8. Throw the meat into the pan and stir vigorously until the beef is completely coated in the sauce, if you're using a nonstick pan it should end almost clean at this point

9. Serve, i suppose.

(Spring onions and sesame seeds could and probably should be involved in this at some stage but i'm not too fond of them)

This is the end result of an amateur's quest at reaching something similiar to the classic asian recipe without involving ingredients that will attract the attention of family members scared of spices or that will end up sitting in your cupboard for months after being used once, i think it's good, if you do end up trying something like this let me know what you think.