Home / All Recipes / Chinese / Cantonese Braised Beef
Cantonese Braised Beef
I came from a Cantonese family, and to me, braised beef is one of our signature comfort food. This dish has meltingly tender beef and an even more heavenly taste of daikon. Believe it or not, I actually love the daikon more than the beef since they end up so juicy and very flavorful by the end of the cooking process. If somehow you are not a daikon lover, feel free to use carrots or potatoes instead.
Cantonese Braised Beef
Ingredients
- 1 kilogram beef brisket, cut into 1 inch cubes
- 2 tablespoon oil
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 1 inch ginger, sliced
- 1 1/2 tablespoon chu hou paste
- 1 tablespoon hoisin sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 2 star anise
- 1 dried orange peel, broken into several pieces
- 1 bay leaf
- 2 tablespoon Shaoxing wine
- 2 cups water
- 500 gram daikon, peeled and cut into triangular wedges
- 1 tablespoon light soy sauce
- 1/2 tablespoon dark soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon rock sugar
- 1 scallion, thinly sliced
Instructions
- Blanch beef in a pot of boiling water for 8-10 minutes. Rinse under running cold water, drain, and set aside.
- Heat oil in a wok and sauté garlic and ginger until fragrant, about 2-3 minutes.
- Add chu hou paste, hoisin sauce, and oyster sauce. Mix well, and cook for 1 minute.
- Return the beef to the wok, add star anise, orange peel, bay leaf, and Shaoxing. Cook until beef is slightly browned, about 3 minutes.
- Add water and bring to a boil. Lower heat, cover the wok, and simmer until the beef is tender, about 2 hours.
- Add daikon, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, and rock sugar. Return to a boil, then lower the heat again, cover the wok, and simmer until the daikon is tender and has absorbed most of the liquid.
- Turn off heat, transfer to a serving plate, and garnish with sliced scallions. Serve with steamed white rice.
Comments
It really looks great. I wonder if I could cook this using the German kind of daikon. Looks quite the same, but I am not sure if the taste is the same, I never had real daikon...
Hi Adina, I am actually not sure what a German daikon looks like, but my guess is if it can absorb the taste of the sauce such as carrots or potatoes, then I say go for it :)
Hmm, lovin it all the way, i can barely smells the anise flavour through out the photograph... my favourite beef cut for this recipe is beef shank.
Haha, I am waiting for the day when we can smell food from photos :) And you are absolutely right that beef shank would be a good cut for this dish.
This looks fantastic! The beef looks so dark, tender, and flavorful. And the seasoning sounds amazing, although I'm not familiar with chu hou paste. I'll have to look for it the next time I'm at the Asian market.
I usually bought the Lee Kum Kee one, and it is usually found in the same place where dou ban jiang (chili bean paste), hoisin sauce, black bean sauce, e.t.c. are sold.
I used this recipe as a guideline. Pretty similar to what my mom told me, except that I used Bean sauce instead of chu hou sauce, and I omitted the hoisin. Different variation of same dish. Been craving this and it is so hearty and yummy
It as delicious! Will definitely make it again. I followed the recipe, but made few modifications: boiled the beef for few minutes less, scoop off the foamy gunk on top of the beef before draining out the hot water, didn't rinse beef with additional cold water, used half the rice wine(shao xing wine), took out star anise right after beef was done, added half cup more water, added carrots and daikon earlier (after an hour and a half of beef being simmer). I also ran out of dried orange peel, but it was fine. I will add it next time I make it. Thank you so much for sharing this wonderful recipe. My husband loves it!
You are welcome Mindy :) I am glad you and your husband love it.
Is it possible to make this with an Insta Pot?
Hi Kristen, you can, but not all the steps though. You still need to follow step 1 through 4 as is, then you can use insta pot for step 5 (cooking time is about 45 minutes). Then, open the insta pot, add ingredients in step 6, and continue cooking again in insta pot for about 15 minutes to cook the daikon. If at the end of the cooking time the sauce is too thin, mix 1 tablespoon corn starch with 2 tablespoon water into a corn starch slurry, add into the stew, press the saute button, and stir until the sauce becomes thick.
This is the 2nd time making this dish because of the ingredients I still had from the first cook. So delicious. Husband loves it too.
Don’t have so for Chu Hou paste, substitute 2 part Hoisin with 1 part Ground Bean sauce (Wok of Life suggestion); and for rock sugar, substitute brown or regular sugar.
Leave a comment