Sunday, July 15, 2007

Beef Shanks - Part 1 - Chinese Roast Beef
















Pre-cut state.
















So the general steps I followed were

1. Purchase Beef Shank. This was probably a piece a little over 2 pounds. I got it at a Chinese grocery market as I doubt you'd be able to get this type of meat at a Safeway. Plus, I doubt they'd know where they were getting there meat from.

2. Put in a pot (as thin as you have that will fit the meat) and then I indiscriminately started adding all sorts of things. Soy Sauce, Wine, Sake, Mirin. The idea is to cover the meat with liquid so it's submerged.

3. Add a piece of ginger and two Chinese spice bags. Sorry, I cheat. My mom made these bags with pre-measured amounts of spices in there such as anise (the starry looking spice), chinese peppers and such. Maybe you'd like to post the exact contents in the comments Mom?

4. Cook for 60-90 minutes. I think I cooked it for 90 minutes because there was just a little meat poking out the top and when I went to flip the meat over I ended up spilling some of my liquid so =P. The point of interest is it should be tender when you poke it. I don't remember what I exactly did so I probably wasn't paying attention. Mind you I was cooking this, the vegetarian dinner, the plum cake, a big vat of beef noodle stew (later), doing food storage chores all at the same time.

5. Let it cool overnight.

6. Remove and cut thin. It should be pretty firm now. If you cut it hot, it will wiggle around too much and you can't cut it thin. Of course you may want hot roast beef so that might not be so bad. If you do do that, do let it cool 10-15 minutes or so so the juices cool and congeal.

7. Now you have a great snack or sandwich meat. I prefer just snacking on it. I think the center of my meat was a bit of that nice pink color and the ones my Mom and Grandma make are usually brown but this is probably because my piece was so large? Anyways. It's good. If you read this blog and would like to try some, leave a comment and I will do my best to get you some.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

You can buy ready made spice packs in any Chinese grocery store, they are called "lu~ bao".

Forgot to tell you, when cutting the meat, make sure you cut it cross grain. You can also pour some left over sauce on the meat when serving. Save the rest of the big pot of sauce/soup, next time you can use it to pot roast anything.

Example: boil eggs, shell them, cut a few slits on egg, toss them in the boiling sauce/soup, after another boil, turn off the fire, soak over night, you'll have lu~ dan\ next day, yummy!

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