Mom's Old Fashioned Chow Mein

This was a recipe my mom had in her "rotation" and it was always a highlight.  She would use leftover pork roast as the protein, which really made it tasty.  We don't eat much pork in our house, another one of my "rules" which I don't want to bore you with at this point. You could just as easily use ground chicken, but I think that the pork just adds a better flavor.  Sometimes stores will have a chow mein meat mixture, which is just course ground pork.   

What we decided to do was grind a pork roast.   The recipe calls for 3 pounds of it, but I don't like that much meat, the best part of the dish, in my opinion, are the vegetables.  Also, when my mom gave me this recipe it only listed a few of the amounts of things.  Another great example of her saying, "Just use a little of this and little of that..." which now I totally understand!  I have given amounts here just to make it easier, but you can obviously do what you want too!  (This recipe calls for drained, canned bean sprouts which I don't care for, so I omitted them in my version, but I kept them in case you do like them.)

Ingredients:

2 T. Cornstarch

3 T. Soy Sauce

3 T. Molasses

8 - 10 Mushrooms, sliced

1 can drained bean sprouts

1/2 cabbage, cut up

3 cups celery, diced

1 large onion, diced

3 lbs. pork, ground

1 cup or more of chicken broth

Veggies are ready!

Directions:

Cook the meat over medium high heat until almost browned. Add vegetables in layers, onion, celery, cabbage and then mushrooms.  Cook until soft.  Add broth until almost covered bring to a boil.  Add soy sauce, cornstarch and molasses.  Let cook down-I like to let it cook a couple hours to let all the flavors settle.  Serve with Chow Mein Noodles.  

The meat and vegetables starting to cook.

Leftovers ready for tomorrow.