Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup
For years, a legit recipe for making this dish eluded me. Because this was one of the best meals you could get for the money in Flushing (at least it was in the 90s), I had eaten it quite often in my teenage years (that and its stir fried counter-part). Moving for work, I ended up in a place where the dish was unobtainable. Furthermore, this was back when the internet had lots of stuff, but not everything, like it does today. This dish is one of those dishes where there is no right way to cook it, and everyone has their own variation. I was looking for a very specific thing and the internet just didn't have it back then. I suspect the modern internet will have close enough recipes to build upon (what the fuck is pinterest?), but in the meantime I was fortunate enough to get instruction from a Taiwanese mom, which is about as legit as you can get.
I'll give the ingredient list below, but first, there are a couple of key things you'll need to get and if you can't get them near you, just don't bother.
- Beef Bones. You should be paying less than $2 a pound for these. I saw them in Whole Foods once for 5.49/pound. Fuck that. I love you Whole Foods, but seriously, fuck you for that. I actually remember when butchers would give you the bones for free. Not only are they not free anymore, good luck finding a butcher.
- Beef Shank. Ox Tails, Beef Stew Beef, and Brisket are all great, but not here. There are two cuts called shank. A "Cross Cut" (sometimes called "Center Cut" too I think) - this is what they use for Osso Buco. It's got the bone in there, and it's not what we want. I don't know the name of the one we want, it has no bone and it's a lengthwise cut instead of the cross cut. Maybe it's the shin. I'm not a butcher. Chances are that wherever you found reasonably priced beef bones, you can find shank too.
Here is a picture of all the ingredients in the packaging they were obtained in, where possible. I hate when people put obscure ingredients in the recipe and they're like, "okay, go to your local market and buy some Steeplump, here's a beautiful, artsy picture that has no recognizable or useful characteristics which will help you actually track it down, P.S. fuck you." I kind of did that to you the reader with the rock sugar and the Sichuan peppercorns. Sorry, but they're really old and the original packaging is long gone. If I knew I would make a post about this, I would have kept the original packaging because I'm not a dick. Well, I kind of am, but not about this.
- 2lb beef shank, cut lengthwise then into big chunks (see below).
- 2lb beef bones (Try to get something that doesn't just ooze marrow, or it will be too greasy. This is easier said than done, but you can resort to cooling the soup and eating it the next day after skimming, if you must).
- 5 cloves garlic
- 4 big slices of ginger
- 5 dried hot peppers. Obviously, more or less depending on your spice needs.
- 2T Sichuan Peppercorns
- 2 Star Anise (more if they're missing points).
- 40g rock sugar.
- 1/2c rice wine (try to get one with no salt - I can't find this locally)
- 3T soy sauce. It probably doesn't make much difference, but:
- 1T dark soy sauce
- 2T regular soy sauce
- 2T ketchup
- 3T bean sauce
- 1T white pepper
Here is how you cut the shank. It's important to cut it correctly otherwise it won't get soft in the right way.
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| Cut the Beef |
With that done, the neat, measured ingredients in a ensemble which would never exist if I weren't taking pictures.
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| Measured Ingredients |
We need to get a good base, and that's where the bones come in. Boil them for about 15 minutes until all the "scum" comes off. We're going to cook these for a long time, and a few extra minutes isn't going to hurt too much.
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Dump the water, clean the bones a bit, and wipe the pot. Refill the pot with water and the bones, and let it cook for around 3 hours. In my notes I have a mentioned of the liquid reducing by half (from a water to bone ration of 4:1to 2:1), but I don't remember if that was just some fanciful fabrication or not. You could do this well in advance if you'd like. I've done it the day before. It won't look like a beef stock because there is not much meat. That's okay, we're going to be adding the bean sauce, and soy sauce which has plenty of glutamates, and will also give the expected brown color. Gonna look like this when it's done.
Likewise with the beef, we want to parboil. When done, don't rinse it in cold water though - I was specifically told this warning twice. My assumption is there is some fear that this might negatively effect the texture of the beef, but I was given no explanation. The Taiwanese style is to get the broth as free from having floating stuff as possible. When being taught how to make the dish I asked, why not boil the scum off of the bones and the beef at the same time? The response was a scowl. I believe that what was meant is you're not supposed to ever let the beef cool down. I generally don't follow this rule.
This is pretty straight forward, but there is one very important secret. Sichuan Peppercorns are a must in this dish. The problem with Sichuan Peppercorns is they are not even close to palatable in the end result. We are using quite a bit of oil here to get the Sichuan Peppercorn infusion. When we remove the peppercorns, we'll lose some oil.