(Don't judge me 😉​​​​​​​) Panda Express Shanghai Steak

[mc510]

My son loves Panda Express Orange Chicken, so I have to eat there periodically ... and I am not to proud too admit that I have grown to like the sauce on the Shanghai Steak.  If anyone here is familiar with the dish, could you help me figure out what are its signature flavors/ingredients?  I'd like to try making a similar sauce at home.

Edited September 2, 2018 by mc510 (log)

[Lisa Shock]

Ok, admittedly, I am one of the worst people to give a reply here, as a vegetarian I have never eaten this, nor do I have any interest in it.

 

There are two videos on youtube where the company had representatives make the dish on local news programs. One thing to note is that partway through cooking they add Chinese cooking wine which does add flavor. They mention in both videos that their executive chef wanted to bring a steakhouse experience to Panda, this may be an important clue. They keep referring to it as their own special secret 'steak sauce' and it appears to be thick and glossy, so right away I suspect that it's thickened with something like cornstarch (or a cheaper modernist ingredient) and it's dark in color. Honestly, this is a company looking to make a profit and I tend to think that they don't really spend a whole lot of time formulating unique sauces from dozens of ingredients. Obviously, they work with a co-packer to make it shelf-stable and to produce it in volume, but, I don't see them spending a year working on the taste component and building it from scratch. And, unfortunately, no low-level cooks will know what's in it because it probably comes to the store in a big tub. My guess is that it's some ratio of bottled steak sauce to Chinese style soy sauce (maybe mushroom soy, look for Pearl River Bridge mushroom soy at an Asian market) then thickened. So, my first experiment would be simply mixing half A-1 and half soy sauce and heating it with cornstarch and see how it goes.

 

You might also see if it's one of the sauces Panda is selling in supermarkets with their own label. If it is, you can buy the real thing, or read ingredients and use them to craft a knockoff.

Good luck!

Edited September 3, 2018 by Lisa Shock (log)

[liuzhou]

Here is a link to a recipe.

[Lisa Shock]

So, yeah, I had no idea the dish was that sweet! The Kecap Manis is a bit unexpected, but, I guess makes sense to those who have tasted the real thing. And, as I suspected, the ingredients aren't an exotic blend of rare seasonings from around the globe, just a mixture of two common sauces and some cornstarch.