Crispy Ginger Beef - A Canadian Classic?

I like Chinese food.  As a child, I would often go with my family to Chinese restaurants for special occasions, and in my mind Chinese food is still associated with special family dinners.  One of my favourite Chinese food dishes is ginger beef.  So, naturally, I wanted to try my hand at making it myself.  To find a recipe for ginger beef, I turned to my most frequently used recipe-finding resource - the internet.  I was not disappointed, with my search highlighting several recipe variations.  I quickly found a couple of recipes that sounded like what I was looking for: deep fried, battered strips of beef with stir fried vegetables in a spicy ginger sauce.  But in my research I came across a surprising fact:

Crispy ginger beef originated in Canada!

According to several sources, while crispy ginger beef is roughly based on an authentically Chinese dish featuring beef and ginger, the "westernized" dish originated in Calgary.

That's right, folks.

Italy has pizza, Germany has bratwurst, England has yorkshire pudding, Scotland has haggis, and Canada has poutine, maple syrup... and crispy ginger beef.

To make ginger beef, you need some sort of beef that is already cooked.  I used leftover roast from a dinner a few days earlier.  You cut the beef into strips, coat the strips in batter, and deep fry them.

Meanwhile, the vegetables are chopped in preparation for being stir fried.  Technically they are supposed to be julienned, but that takes a lot of work, so I just chopped them however I felt like.  I used carrots, red peppers, onions, green onions, garlic, and ginger.

The vegetables are then stir fried, and once they have begun to soften you add the sauce and deep fried beef.

Serve with rice, and enjoy!

For the recipe that I used*, and some of the history of crispy ginger beef, you can follow this link:  Crispy Ginger Beef: The Authentic Calgary Recipe

*Some changes that I made to the recipe included adding different kinds of vegetables, chopping/dicing the vegetables rather than julienning (is that a word??), and omitting the mushroom soy sauce and Chinese cooking wine from the sauce.  Next time I would also add less water to the batter.  And be warned that if you don't like spicy food, you should add less of the dried crushed chili peppers.