I NEED A BIGGER CROCKPOT :I

so anyways um I likes me some Chinese buffets. No duh, right? Who doesn't? Found a recipe on a website and figured I'd tweak it a bit for added nutritional... stuff, cus so far, this stuff has contained the only vegetables I've eaten all week. Also had to fight the urge to put raw meat in my mouth because it smelled so good while i was cutting it. It looked and acted a little bit like cranberry sauce.
Aaanyway here's the recipe.

INGREDIENTS:

1.75 lb. (0.8 kg) Beef round <<slice thin and cut into bite-size strips (or slightly larger)
1.5 cup (360 ml) beef broth or stock
8 oz. (225 g) sliced mushrooms
1/2 or more of a medium-sized onion, sliced and chopped (i used a vidalia)
1 large carrot <<slice thinly-ish
Several handfuls of broccoli florets
1 or 2 handfuls of bean sprouts
2/3 cup (160 ml) soy sauce
1/3 cup (80 ml) brown sugar
~2 or 3 tbsp. Sesame oil
4 or so large cloves/2 tbsp garlic <<chop or mince
Red Pepper flakes according to taste
2+ tbsp. corn starch
4+ tbsp. Water << Room-temp or cold. That part's probably important.


PROCEDURE:

1) prepare the ingredients (if you haven't already). Cut up the steak, chop/mince the garlic, slice the mushroms if you didn't buy them pre-sliced, slice/chop the onion, bust up the broccoli into florets (whatever the hell those are). Whatever you gotta do.

2) Saute the garlic in the 2 or 3 tablespoons of sesame oil over a low heat. Don't heat it too hot and don't cook it too long. It might smell a bit off-color once you take it off the heat anyway, but apparently that's just what sesame oil does when you heat it up. I suppose I wouldn't know.

3) Grease the interior of the crock pot and toss in the steak, brown sugar, soy sauce, garlic and sesame oil, broth, all the veggies EXCEPT the broccoli, and the pepper flakes. Turn the heat on, cover it, and maybe mix it around from time to time. (I should have done so sooner. An hour or so into the cooking, I discovered that half of the meat had clumped together at the bottom of the ingredients. Not a big deal though -3- )

4) If you set the crock pot to High heat, it should only take about 2 or 3 hours. At Low, it should take 4 or 5. I kept mine on Low most of the time but set it up to High for about 10 or 20 minutes every so often.

5) Take a load off and relax a few hours while it's all simmering together.

6) Around the end of the cooktime, mix the corn starch with the few tablespoons of cold water. Pour the corn starch into the crock pot and mix it through. You can add more cornstarch if you really want it nice and thick.

7) Add 20-30 minutes to the cooktime.

8) At the last few minutes of cooktime, put the broccoli in a microwave-safe tupperware or similar, add about a half inch or so of water at the bottom, cover it just enough to let it vent, and microwave it on high for 3 minutes. Drain the water out, dump the broccoli into the crock pot, and mix it in.
9) At this point, you can turn off the heat or let it simmer a bit longer.

10) Provided your cooking skills are better than 'terrible,' the steak and veggies should now be done cooking and are prepared to sacrifice themselves to satisfy your insatiable lust for cow flesh and assorted plant matter (unless you dont have such an appetite; in which case, why did you make this?).

recipe adapted from http://getinmybelly.com/crock-pot-beef-broccoli/


AFTERTHOUGHTS:

I only used round because I couldn't find any flank. Now I'm starting to think round may actually be better imo. After consuming a few bowls of this stuff with rice, I figured I'd try and think of things I could have done differently and more things I could have tossed in. Some ideas are as follows.

-Grated ginger
-Bell peppers
-Baby corns
-Snow peas
-Chestnuts
-Cabbage?
-Tomatos????
-Maybe I should have waited until I added the corn starch to put the onions in

I also get the feeling this would be really good with steak fries or potato wedges.