Chinese Braised Beef Shank
Forget the fork! It melts as soon as it hits your tongue and fills your mouth with a spicy yet dulcified flavor that takes you to new heights with each and every bite.
MAKE IT 🤓👩🍳
Chinese Braised Beef Shank
Recently I purchased a slow cooker after a visit with my Brother-In-law. He and his girlfriend made Turner and me Beef Colorado. It was fall off the bone delish. But the thought of another kitchen countertop appliance was, to say the least, an exhausting thought. Was I really going to reduce myself to a shortcut appliance? I mean, I have a dutch oven I use all the time. It took me months to decide (with reservation) to purchase one. It’s been a minute now, and I have discovered that one, it’s a great tool of convenience, and two, there is room for both a dutch oven and a slow cooker…and there are no packets of onion soup or cans of beans anywhere near it! OK? OK. Let’s get to it.
Chinese Braised Beef Shank is a recipe very familiar to me. It’s as mouth-watering as it is ambrosial. And I had forgotten just how much my parents made it growing up. It’s completely different from other braised meat dishes (think Osso Buco, Coq Au Vin, a simple Pot Roast). Chinese Beef Shank is fall off the bone. Forget the fork! It melts as soon as it hits your tongue and fills your mouth with a spicy yet dulcified flavor that takes you to new heights with each and every bite. It’s better not to think about the meat sweats at this point. Just eat.
But wait. Hold on. There is a twofer! A magical component is created in the process known as the Master Sauce. It all takes me back to the memory of recycled mayonnaise jars filled with a lovely dark jelly sitting in my mothers’ fridge..magic people. Simply magic.
After your perfectly cooked braised beef shank is complete, you'll be left with the Magic Sauce to reuse. Braise other meats, veggies, eggs, rice...etc.
And so the low and slow….really slow has begun.
Spice Packet:
3 cinnamon sticks
2 black cardamom pod
1 nutmeg
1 tablespoon Sichuan peppercorns
4 star anise
8 cloves
3 piece dried tangerine peel
2 bay leaves
2 teaspoon white or black peppercorns
5 dried liquorice slices
Everything else!
3lbs of Beef Shank cut into 2 inch cubes (minus bones)
2 cups chicken broth
3 slices ginger (crushed whole)
tbs. Red Pepper flakes
1 stalk lemon grass (cut into pieces)
1/2 cup soy sauce
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
1/2 cup rice vinegar
1/4 cup shoaxing wine (substitute dry sherry)
handful of dried date
6 green onions (cut in 2 inches, green and white)
heaping handful of rock sugar (substitute 1/2 cupe tightly packed brown sugar)
Braised Beef Shank:
Make your spice packet and set it aside for the moment
Sear the beef and place the beef in the slow cooker
In the same pot add garlic, ginger and lemongrass red pepper flakes with 2 cups of chicken broth and deglaze
Scrape all the lovely fond from the bottom of the pot and pour it into the slow cooker
Wisk together the soy sauce, hoisin sauce, rice vinegar and then add that to the slow cooker
Add jujube, green onions and rock sugar or brown sugar if using then nestle the spice pack in the cooker
If you need ( I always do! Take steps 1-4 and then put it in the fridge. Add 4-6 when you are ready )
Set your slow cooker to low for 8 hours
When your meat is done cool your meat in the cooking liquid. If you remove your delicious, moist braised meat from the liquid right after all of the moisture and gelatin you have coaxed out of the shank will be wasted. Why? Because all of that is now in the braising liquid! Let the meat and liquid cool together, and some moisture and gelatin will return to the shank.
After it has cooled, remove the meat and let it rest on a plate or bowl for a moment.
Discard the aromatic pouch, and strain the sauce through a fine-mesh strainer.
Use about a 1/2 cup of the sauce to return your meat for serving.
Master Sauce:
Bring the rest of your sauce to a boil.
Turn off the heat and let the sauce completely cool.
Pour it into a mason jar and put it in the fridge.
After a few hours or even overnight, you can skim the thin layer of fat. Whala. You have that lovely dark jelly I talked about earlier!
