Category: Beef

Beef Recipes

Bo Luc Lac, Vietnamese Shaking Beef

I picked this Vietnamese recipe because of its name. Luc Lac means the “shaking” of the beef, or really, the tossing of the meat in a hot wok after a quick sear. I wanted a flavorful beef dish without putting too much effort in cooking. The original recipe asked for filet mignon, but I downgraded to top sirloin and sliced it in smaller pieces to cook easier and quicker.

Watercress is good as a bed for this dish, but loose spinach leaves worked just as well. The bitterness of the greens made a great contrast to the Vietnamese flavor of the beef. I also love that as soon as you add the cooked beef on them, they wilt and make them a part of the entire meal.

Ingredients:
1 lb beef sirloin, cut into 1/2-inch piece
salt, pepper
1/4 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup oyster sauce
1/4 cup white sugar
juice from 1 lime
2 tbsps butter
1 red onion, thinly sliced
2 stalks of scallion, chopped
spinach leaves

1. In a medium bowl, add the beef pieces and toss with salt. Refrigerate and let marinate for at least an hour.
2. When ready to cook, whisk together the soy sauce, oyster sauce and sugar in a bowl until the sugar has dissolved. Then whisk in the lime juice with some pepper.
3. In a large skillet over high heat, add some oil. Right before the oil begins to smoke, add the sirloin and sear, without stirring, for 1 minute. Use a spatula to turn the beef over and cook on the other side for another minute. Add the butter, soy sauce mixture, red onion and scallions. Cook, stirring often, until the meat, red onion and scallions are well coated with the sauce, about 1 minute.
4. Arrange the spinach greens on a platter and spoon the beef over the greens. Serve immediately and pour the sauce from the skillet on top to wilt the vegetables.

Chicken-Fried Beef Steak with Curry Gravy

This recipe is from Filipino Top Chef Dale Talde. Don’t be fooled by the name; he used a simple fried chicken batter and applied it to beef. The original version required 1/2 cup of milk to make the batter, but I only had almond milk in the fridge that I didn’t really want to use, so I decided to skip it. It might not have made the batter stick the way it should, but my beef slices looked okay in the end without the milk. I also used lemon instead of lime and cut down the amount of ingredients needed here. This could have lasted 3 meals if only I stopped snacking on the meat while I cooked the pasta.

Ingredients:
1 large egg, lightly beaten
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
salt
pepper
6 1/4-inch-thick slices of top-round beef
egg noodles

For the curry gravy:
oil
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
a small knob of ginger, peeled, minced
1 tbsp curry powder
2 squirts of Sriracha
1/2 cup strong-brewed coffee
half a 13-ounce can unsweetened coconut milk
juice from half a lemon
1 tsp sugar

1. In a shallow plate, whisk the egg. In another plate, generously season the flour with salt and pepper. Dredge the beef in the flour, tapping off the excess. Dip the coated slices in the beaten egg and dredge again in the flour, lightly patting the coating to help it adhere.
2. In a large skillet, heat 1/2 inch of oil. Working in 2 batches, fry the steak over moderate heat, turning once, until golden and crispy, about 5 minutes. Drain on paper towels and season lightly with salt. Slice in strips when cool enough to the touch.
3. In the same skillet, add a little more oil and sauté the onion, garlic and ginger. Cook over moderate heat, stirring occasionally, until the onion is softened. Add the curry powder and Sriracha and cook, stirring, for 2 minutes. Add the coffee and boil until reduced by half, about 3 minutes. Add the coconut milk, lemon juice and sugar, season the gravy with salt and pepper and simmer until thickened, about 5 minutes.
4. While the gravy is cooking, boil a pot of water and cook the egg noodles al dente, about 15 minutes. Drain and put in a serving bowl. Topped with the sliced chicken-fried steaks and pour over the curry gravy. Serve with some lemon wedges.

Baked Eggplant with Minced Beef

After stopping by her family’s house in Westchester unannounced, Lucy’s father was forced to gather some tomatoes and eggplants from his incredible garden to send me home with some bounty. It’s the kind of garden that I can only dream of. There are rows and rows of different shapes and colors of tomatoes, all happily dangling from pipes meticulously tied together. All shades of aubergines peek from stems covered in fuzz and peppers of all sizes dot the compact landscape. When I was invited to their upstate cabin during Memorial Day weekend, I tasted the vegetables they picked from their garden and all I’ve been wanting to do was see it for myself. How can a small plot of land yield so much love?

Back in my apartment where the second batch of mixed greens I planted are not even making any more effort to grow past an inch, I thought of what to do with all the eggplants. If my father was in town, he would tell me to grill the slender Japanese kinds over the stove and mix with scrambled egg for a Filipino breakfast. But there was one large eggplant that looked good enough to be stuffed, and so I went through my Mediterranean cookbooks to find a recipe that did just that. The original Turkish recipe called for the beef to be baked with the eggplant. I didn’t do that because I didn’t want to dry out the beef and just opted to brown it separately. It all goes down when you serve: the eggplant flesh will be soft enough to scoop up and you top each serving off with the ground beef.

Ingredients:
a large knob of butter
2 lbs ground beef
1 red onion, thinly sliced
1 tomato, sliced
a handful of parsley, roughly chopped
salt
pepper
red chile flakes
1 large eggplant
olive oil

1. Preheat oven to 350º. Cut the eggplant in half and score the insides with multiple slits, both crosswise and lengthwise. Pour and brush some olive oil on the eggplant. Bake for 25 minutes.
2. In the meantime, melt butter and brown ground beef for about 10 minutes in a frying pan. Add the onion, tomato and parsley and cook. Season with salt, pepper and chile.
3. Remove eggplant to a serving plate and soften the cooked insides with a spoon so that you can stuff it with the beef.

Beef Shank Noodle Soup

When was the last time you put food in your mouth and thought, Wow, that’s exactly what I wanted to eat tonight? I felt that way with this soup. New York City has been having really humid summers that remind me of the intense sun I experienced in Laos last August. While there, I couldn’t help but eat a bowl of Laotian pho from the lady who had a stand in the street market. I sweated over my hot bowl of soup, but cooled down as soon as I got into it. No wonder people in Asia eat hot or spicy meals no matter how hot the weather is outside–sweating cools them down.

If you can’t make the beef stock here ahead of time, you’ll learn to multitask and use three of your stove’s burners at once. You’ll also just have to do some extra work removing the fat from the stock since you can’t just break the solidified fat as easily if you stored it in the fridge overnight. Note that I didn’t use any salt at all. The miso paste with the soy sauce should be enough sodium for your body in one serving. You may adjust the flavor by experimenting with the beef marrow stock and beef shank ratio when assembling the soup for your guests.

There’s a lot of ingredients involved but you only need a small amount for each. I came up with this combination because they’re what I have in the pantry. Throw in lime juice, fish sauce, and cilantro in there for a more Vietnamese flavor profile. As soon as you appreciate making a flavorful broth separate from the stock, you’ll begin to master different soup bases and will get used to trying combinations of herbs and spices you never thought possible. It’s what I like about cooking, really–the leeway you have to make adjustments and the freedom you have to change and make your favorite eater happy: you.

Ingredients:
marrow bones
udon noodles
sesame oil
bok choy
enoki mushrooms
hot chili oil
1 scallion, chopped

For the broth:
oil
beef shanks
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 small knob ginger, peeled, sliced
1 small red onion, finely chopped
1 scallion, chopped
2 Thai chiles
2 bay leaves
1 cinnamon stick, crushed
1 tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp black peppercorns
1 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
1 star anise
1 tbsp miso paste
4 tbsps soy sauce

1. Make the beef stock ahead of time by boiling water in a very large pot and cooking the marrow bones. Remove impurities that rise to the top, and simmer covered, for about 2 to 3 hours. Let cool before storing in the fridge to let the fat coagulate at the top. When ready to make the soup, remove from the fridge and then discard the fat by scooping off the solidified fat. Set aside.
2. Cook the beef shanks and make the broth. In a large Dutch oven, heat some canola oil. Brown the shanks on both sides and remove to a plate.
3. Using the rendered fat in the same pot, sauté the garlic, onion, and ginger. Add the rest of the herbs and spices and keep sautéing to make them fragrant.
4. Add back the shanks and ladle in enough beef stock to submerge them to cook the meat. Simmer for at least 30 minutes or until the meat falls off the bones.
5. When ready to assemble the soup, boil some water in yet another pot to cook the noodles per package instructions and drain to your serving bowl.
6. In a small sauté pan (or use the pot where the noodles were cooked), heat a scant of sesame oil and flash-fry the enoki mushrooms and bok choy.
7. In your serving bowl of noodles, ladle in 2 heapings of beef stock and 1 broth. Top with the vegetables, sliced meat, and hot chili oil

Lengua, Beef Tongue Tacos with Tomatillo Sauce

Don’t let this offal turn you off. This lengua, or beef tongue, taco recipe will be one of the easiest things you’ll make at home providing that you have the 3 hours to simmer the tongue which you can totally do way ahead of time. The July 4th holiday is coming up, so really, you have no excuse not to do this for you and your omnivorous friends.

The tomatillo sauce was the easiest to make since you just put everything in a food processor and pulse. Sure you can buy the ones from the grocery store, but what are you doing while waiting for that tongue to simmer? You might as well have everything homemade, right?

When assembling your tacos, feel free to add avocados if you’re in your California mood, or thinly-sliced French breakfast radishes for some extra tartness. I simply used my hinona kabu, or Japanese turnips, harvest from my terrace. The roots didn’t quite make it because of the humidity, but I got some nice salad greens out of them.

Ingredients:
1 beef tongue, completely thawed if frozen, thoroughly washed
1 large onion, halved
1 head of garlic, peeled and crushed
4 bay leaves
1 tbsp of peppercorns
salt
oil
corn tortillas
radish tops, thoroughly washed
hot sauce

For the tomatillo sauce:
6 tomatillos, husks removed, halved
1 small bunch of cilantro, roughly chopped
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 jalape¤o, chopped
juice from 1 lime
salt
sugar

1. In a large pot, boil the tongue with enough water to cover and add the onion, garlic, bay leaves, peppercorn and salt. Reduce to a simmer, cover, and cook up to 3 hours, or until the tongue is soft to the touch.
2. Remove the cooked tongue from the water to a chopping block until it’s cool to the touch. Using a paring knife and your hands, peel off the white-colored skin covering and discard. You may also discard the the rough patch where the tongue was attached to the cow’s mouth if that’s too much to look at–but it’s perfectly edible.
3. Slice the tongue in 1/4-inch slices. Heat some oil in a skillet and quickly sear tongue slices. Remove to a sieve to drain the oil.
4. Make your tomatillo sauce. Broil the tomatillos in the oven for 10 minutes. Remove to a food processor and pulse them with the rest of the sauce ingredients. Season to taste.
5. Assemble your tacos. On a skillet over medium fire, warm the corn tortillas to soften. Let your guests top their tortilla with the tongue pieces, radish tops and tomatillo sauce. Don’t be afraid to use more hot sauce!