Braised beef with Potatoes & carrots

Posted by Julie in Cantonese, Cooking

It’s another day where I called home and asked my dad advice to cook this delicious comfort dish. I wouldn’t normally missed it when I was back with the folks but I find myself craving it more then ever! After some bits of guidance from dad – I decided to wing it and see what I came out with. Dad’s original recipe does not use beef stock but I added some to bring out more flavour and normally he does it with a slow cooker. Sadly I don’t have a slow cooker so on the stove it goes.

If you do attempt this yourself find a good braising beef cut with lots of sinew so it becomes super tender at the end of the cooking process. I had a lot of problems with the scum on top and not entirely sure how to combat this. I think I could pre-boil the beef but then I wouldn’t be able to do the cornflour coating beforehand :(!

Moving along our kitchen is now pretty much set. We bought a kitchen bench from Ikea which doubles as a dining table. It can sort of fit 6 people. I am so happy because now our 1 line kitchen consist has extra bench space for me to work on and more storage space. We picked a Varde base cabinet with an extra worktop.

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the beef boiling away – look at all that oil eek!

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Carrots and potatos added to the stock – not very pretty. Make sure to get rid of that scum!

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the end result super tender beef!

Ingredients

700 grams of braising beef such as chuck.
1 teaspoon of table salt
1 teaspoon of black pepper
3 tablespoons of cornflour
2 tablespoons of a neutral oil such as vegetable
5 cm ginger of piece grated
2 garlics crushed
500 mls of beef stock
750mls of water
3 star anise
1/4 cup of soy sauce
dash of white pepper
2 large potatos
3 carrots

Method:
1. Cut beef into cubes about 2cms in size. Mix salt, pepper and cornflour with the beef. Set aside.
2. Heat Oil in a dutch oven/pot about 4L in size on medium heat. Add garlic and ginger.
3. After a minute, add the beef and fry until beef is browned.
4. Add the water and stock and increase heat to high. Once boiled reduce the heat to low.
5. Add the soy sauce, white pepper and star anise and cover with a lid.
6. Check the beef often and spoon out the scum if there is any.
7. After 4 hours on the stove, chopped the carrots and potatoes about 3cms in size. Added to the beef.
8. Cook for another hour and serve with rice

Serves four as a side dish with rice

40 responses

  3. yummmm! (: Looks so good babe! And definitely very comforting. Love that bench that you and Zach fixed up! hehe and the pretty plate! Everything is looking good! hehe x

  8. This reminds me of the dish “lagu” except that you’ve used beef instead of chicken. Always love a fix of home cooked food. I’m pretty thankful my parents are great cooks. I need to get a cracking on learning how to cook like them!

  9. You’re dad is an amazing cook 🙂 neither of my parents are good cooks ~ wished I could call my mum for advice sighhhh anyhow this looks like a great dish especially for those freezing cold nights!!! I’m gonna tell Mr Bao now hehe 😛

  10. Oh man. This is too awesome, especially for this recipe. Anything warm and hearty like these that I can eat with a big bowl of rice, please! I like how you have a good mix between recipes and reviews on your blog haha. Cuz for me, I enjoy eating out just as much as I love cooking at home =]

  13. Dear Julie,

    I find the best way to minimize the scum is to rinse the beef once it is all cut into small pieces under hot water from the kitchen tap for 1 minute. This will get rid of a lot of impurities, such as bone fragment, excess fat and your soup will also not be overly oily as well. This is also better than parboil as you won’t lose any flavour at all.

    Coating the beef cubes with corn flour is not necessary in my opinion because it makes little difference when it is going to be simmered in a stew for a few hours. It is easier to just brown the beef cubes as it is and if you need the soup thickened, just stir in the corn flour towards the end when you turn down the heat.

    I recently came across Guilaumme Brahimi’s beef bourguignon and I think you might like his recipe too. Happy cooking!

    http://chopinandmysaucepan.com/beef-bourguignon

    • Thanks so much Chopin! I was thinking of actually parboiling but worried about the flavour.

      Might try the cornflour method I am use to browning with cornflour/flour when slow cooking.

    • I agree chop in and my saucepan re: corn flour is not necessary, but I also found in Daiso they have this paper thing for sucking up oil? I don’t know how it works though but I think you put it on the surface and use a chopstick to fish it back out and volia! the oil and scum is gone! or there are also scum scoop that like a flat netted type thing my mum use. I wonder if you could also let it cool in the fridge and skim the oil and scum

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