Stewed Beef Shank 滷牛腱

Stewed Beef Shank 卤牛腱 with stewed eggs 卤蛋

 

Stewed Beef Shank 卤牛腱 Recipe

Ingredients:

1 beef shank– cut in half lengthwise

Stew Sauce Base:
3 inch ginger– crushed
4 cloves garlic– crushed
3 stalks green onion
3 star anise 八角
1 tsp five spice powder
1 stick cinnamon bark 桂皮
1/2 stick rock sugar
1 cardamon 草果
1 tbsp salt
4 tbsp cooking wine
1 tsp chicken bouillon powder
1/2 cup soy sauce
3 tbsp dark caramel sauce 黑酱油
6 cups water
2 dashes ground white pepper

Method:

1. Put all ingredients in stew sauce base into a deep pot. Cover and boil on high heat for 15 minutes for the flavor to come out.
2. In a separate pot blanch beef shank briefly. Rinse and put into the stew sauce. Cover and boil beef shank on high heat for 15 minutes. Reduce heat to medium low, cover and simmer for 1–1.5 hours until the meat is slightly tender. Turn the meat several times while simmering. Turn off heat, cover and continue let the meat stay in the sauce to soak up the flavor.
3. Cool completely, chill if necessary, before thin slicing the meat or it may fall apart.

Regina’s Note:

• The cooking time depends on the size of the beef shank. Undercooked beef shank produces tough meat, but overcooked beef shank falls crumbly apart even when you thin slice after chilling. Use a chopstick or fork to check the doneness of the meat– it should feel slight tender as the chopstick/fork inserted into the center of the meat.
• This stew sauce base can be kept in the freezer and reuse. Just strain and remove grease before freezing. When reuse the sauce, add a little more of each ingredients to bring out the flavor again.
• The stew sauce is very flavorful especially after stew the meat, and thus great for stewing soy sauce eggs, tofu, tendon etc. It is best to stew each kind of food separately as each requires a different stewing time. Also, add in a little more ginger, green onion, cooking wine etc before adding each kind of food, sort to bring out the flavor.
• For stewed kelp/seaweed 卤海带, because of its natural fishy scent, requires little more cooking wine to neutralize the flavor. Make kelp the last ingredient to stew if you’re not keeping the stew sauce, or take some sauce out and stew kelp separately if you’re planning to reuse the stew sauce. Also, since kelp cannot be stewed too long, so be sure the sauce is slightly thick before adding kelp (I would say stew kelp on high heat until it boils then simmer on medium low heat for 20-30 minutes, depending the thickness of the kelp. Again, use chopstick or fork to check for doneness).

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