Welcome to souped up recipes.
Today we are making Sichuan beef noodle soup.
We call it Hong Shao Niu Rou Mian [红烧牛肉面].
Not only It is the most well-known noodle
soup in mainland China
It is also super popular in Taiwan.
According to my research, Tai wan beef noodle soup was originally from mainland China.
I don’t know that much detail about how
it gets the influence
but it is definitely a great recipe that I have to share.
So let’s get started.
You can use almost any cuts for this recipe
such as beef brisket, shank, chuck.
Doesn’t need to be expensive cuts.
I got this from the supermarket
and the package says beef stew.
It already cut into 1 and a half inch pieces
so I couldn’t tell what cut it is but it works really well.
We will do a quick blanch to remove the impurity.
Prepare a pot of cold water.
Add your beef in along with few slices of
ginger and 2 tbsp of Shao Xing wine.
Once it comes to a boil, you will see a lot
of impurities floating on the top.
Those will affect the taste
so we are goingto discard this whole pot of water.
Just pour it into a sink.
You don’t need to worried about wasting all the flavors.
The good stuff won’t come out in the first
10 minutes of boiling.
Wash the beef with running water to get rid of the blood scum.
Make sure you drain it and dry it completely.
Heat up the wok and add some oil.
Give it a toss so the oil covers the bottom.
Put your well-drain beef into the wok.
If your beef is not completely dry,
the oil will splash everywhere.
I am just adjusting some pieces
so all the beef are able to touch the bottom of the wok.
Give it a few minutes to fry on one side.
I just want to brown the beef to get some
nice color.
Look at that, so beautiful.
It already starts smelling good.
Flip all the beef and fry the other side.
You want to brown as many surfaces as you can.
Once you think it good enough,
turn the heat to low and push the beef to the side.
Add 1.5 tbsp of sugar.
Stir it until it turns into a caramel color.
Be very careful here because you don’t want
to burn the sugar.
That is also why we are using low heat at
this point.
Once the color is getting there,
stir the beef around so the sugar coats the meat
and now we should add our aromatic and dried spices.
Make sure you still keep the heat at low or
else you will burn the meat and the sugar.
- 4 slices of ginger
- 4 cloves of crushed garlic
- some white part of spring onion
- 1/2 of medium size onion that I cut into chunks
- 1 stalk of cinnamon
- 2 pieces of bay leaves
- 3 pieces of hot chili (Make sure you adjust
the spicy level to your own preference If
you don’t eat spicy food, you can skip the
chili)
- 2 pieces of star anise
- 2 pieces of dried orange peel.
If you don’t have dried orange peel, you
can use fresh ones.
- 1.5 tbsp of Sichuan Dou ban jiang
- 1 tbsp of tomato paste
Mix everything together.
In about 2 or 3 minutes,
you should be able to smell the fragrance.
Also, the Sichuan Dou ban jiang and the tomato sauce together should make the beef look incredibly beautiful like this.
Your entire house should smell amazing.
Now we will add in the rest of the seasoning:
2 tbsp of Shao xing wine.
1.5 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tsp of dark soy sauce,
I like to add these watery ingredients later
so other spices and seasoning we add earlier will have enough time to infuse 
with the beef fat.
At this point, you can add some water and
keep simmering the beef in this wok.
But mine is a new wok.
I just seasoned it not so long ago
and trying to build the natural coating every day.
I don’t want to ruin that so I just transfer
it into a clay pot.
Then fill it up with water.
Don’t forget to rinse the wok.
There are a lot of flavors.
We don’t want to waste that.
The water should be enough to cover all the
beef.
I add about 1.2 liters water here.
Move the ingredients around so they all stay
under the liquid.
Cover it and bring this to a boil.
Once it is nice and bubbling, you can give
it a taste to adjust the saltiness.
I add about half tbsp of salt here.
Mix it and turn the heat to low.
Simmer it for 3-4 hours.
This dish can be cooked in a pressure cooker
which is the fastest way.
You can also use a slow cooker.
For different cooking tools, some are air-tight
some are not so the water evaporates differently.
You just need to adjust the amount of water.
[3 HOURS LATER]
I can’t wait to show you how the beef looks
like.
Even though it is night time now and the lights
are not very good.
Look at that, nice and bubbling.
The broth looks incredibly flavorful.
Let’s test how tender the meat is.
You can just break it up with a chopstick.
That’s amazing.
Now let’s prepare our noodles.
In a big noodle bowl, add in some beef stock.
This is just beef bones simmered with water.
No season and spices.
The reason we use it is that we want to dilute
the braised beef soup.
Because the braised beef soup we made is extremely
flavorful.
It powders everything else.
If you are out of beef stock, you can use
boiled plain water.
It works good too.
Add a pinch of salt in it.
Then we will move on to our noodles.
Any type of noodles will go good with that
delicious braised beef.
Sometimes I use rice noodle, sometimes I use
mong bean noodle.
Today I am using my hand-made egg noodles.
can check it out.
I have a pot of boiling water here.
Put the noodles in.
It will drop down the temperature a little.
Wait until it comes back to boil.
Then add in a cup of cold water to drop down
the temperature again.
This process is called 点冷水.
It is a traditional way to make sure your
noodles are completely cooked through.
Fresh noodles cook really fast.
It will just take about 2 minutes.
If you are not sure if it is ready, you can
just try a piece and see if you like the texture.
Once you think it is good, take the noodle
out.
And put it in the bowl.
Now, take that delicious looking red beef
soup and put it in the bowl.
The amount depends on your preference.
Make sure you taste and adjust the flavor
because there is a risk of over adding it.
Top few pieces of beef on it.
By the way, if you eat this in a restaurant,
they won’t serve you that much meat.
This is the benefit of making your own beef
noodle soup.
Add some blanched baby bok choy to balance
the flavor.
If you want to upgrade, you can add a perfectly
cooked egg.
I think this is already looking amazing so
I didn’t add the egg.
It smells so good that I just want to eat
it right away.
the use of those Asian spices.To me, it just
so satisfied to enjoy a big bowl of beef noodle
soup at home because I can just eat as much
beef as I
want
