Vietnamese Beef Stew - Marion's Kitchen
Melt in you mouth super tender beef.
Slowly braised in a beautiful sauce spiced with Vietnamese flavours.
This is my version of Vietnamese Beef Stew.
Vietnam has so many interesting dishes. I love this one because it's one of the ones that takes
a little bit from French cuisine and that's going to Vietnam's history of course.
This is a really beautiful beef stew, but flavoured with amazing Vietnamese spices and aromatics. I love it.
Anyway, let's get started on the all important marinade. Cause that is going to add a lot of the flavour that we're
looking for.
I just need some lemongrass, obviously your usual suspect for a beef stew.
To break this up, I just want to hit this with the back of my knife.
I always like to peel off these outer layers. They can be really quite firm, a bit hard and tough.
Slice off the end. Now we're in the really soft part of the lemongrass.
I'm just going to finely slice them.
To that, I'm going to add some fish sauce,
some brown sugar,
and some Chinese five spice. This is my homemade Chinese five spice.
If you want to give it a try, you can watch the video on how to make it on my Youtube channel.
I just love the fragrance of this.
When it's fresh like this, it really makes a big difference.
Give that a mix through.
Let's talk about the beef.
I am using beef chuck. The reason is that I love this fatty marbling that goes right thorough that beef.
You're really looking for a secondary cut of beef here, because I want it to break down, all the fat,
and the little bits of sinew will get all gelatinous, soft and amazing.
So that's the kind of beef that you want. You could beef shin as well.
That would be a good one. I'm just going to get that straight into my marinade.
Just give this a mix through. You'll be surprised at how much fish sauce really emphasises
the flavour of the beef. When you go to fry this a little bit later on, the beef just smells beefier.
The finished dish tastes beefier, I think. And that's all because that fish sauce just adds a bit of kick.
Savoury kick or umami kick to the dish.
You just want to give that marinade time to do its work in there, about 30 minutes is good.
The beef has had its time to get extra beefy in that marinade. Now we're going to start our stew.
Just like any Western or French stew, we're going to start off by browning the meat.
I want some oil into a hot pan.
Contrary to what you'll hear in a lot of different places, searing the meat is nothing to do with
sealing in juices, or any weird things like that. This is purely about flavour.
The reaction that happens on the outside of the beef, all the browning, all that beautiful colour,
that is the flavour that we want in our beef stew.
So it's purely a flavour play here.
Don't overcrowd your pan here. If you need to do this in batches, that's fine.
The important thing is that we're all about the colour, the heat, and the browning here.
Once I've got that beautiful deep colour on all sides of that beef, I'm just going to take it out into a tray.
Any leftover marinade in your bowl, just pour that on top of the beef as well.
And we'll get all of that back into the pan along with those resting juice a bit later.
But first, we want to fry off a few more aromatics. I'm going to add a little bit more oil to the pan here.
Don't wash the pan, just leave those lovely beefy juices in the bottom. Add in some garlic.
Some shallots.
Give those shallots time to soften up in the pan here. Use your spoon to to scrape up any little bits of flavour
from the bottom as well.
I'm going to add in some tomato paste.
Give that tomato paste a little time to cook out in the pan.
Also going to need some ginger here. I just want some slices that are going to infuse the sauce.
Some star anise and some cinnamon.
Now add that beef back in, and any of those juices.
Just mix that beef around. Get it coated in that tomato paste.
Now I want to add in some carrots.
And then some water.
I just want enough water that it sort of comes about half way up that beef and carrot mixture.
A lot of juice will come out of the beef as well. So I won't add too much.
Just wait for this to come back up to a gentle simmer. Then you can put a lid on.
You can do this 2 ways. On the stove top is fine, a really low gentle heat for a couple of hours or until that beef is
really meltingly tender. I tend to find though that cooking this in the oven is a lot easier.
Because sometimes you can overheat the beef as it's cooking on the stove top, because of that
really hot heat underneath. I find the beef isn't as tender. So I'm going to get mine into the oven.
This beef has been making my kitchen smell amazing. Take a look.
All those beautiful spices, the star anise, cinnamon. Divine.
Let's just check and see if that beef is ready. What I want, is for that piece just to fall apart.
With a touch of my spoon. There you go.
Beautifully tender. So good. I will just test the sauce for a little bit of seasoning.
Let's just see.
Mmm... That is such a beautiful combination.
You can't even really put your finger on all the different aromatics cause they all just blend in so harmoniously.
But the lemongrass is there, and that beautiful star anise. Mmm... So delish.
I will add a little bit more fish sauce though, for my liking.
Just gently stir that through.
Now we just serve that up. Nice big bowl.
Little bit of coriander on top.
This goes perfectly with steamed rice or my preference, is a beautiful nice crusty French baguette.
Dunk that into that sauce. A little piece of beef.
That is so heaven. So good.
This is honestly, beef stew whole 'nother level.
My Vietnamese beef stew recipe has all the slow-cooked beef goodness of a French boeuf bourguignon but pumped up with Vietnamese aromatics and flavours. Also known as 'bo kho' in Vietnamese. Get the recipe: https://www.marionskitchen.com/vietnamese-beef-stew/ Subscribe to my channel and press the bell button to get notifications every time I post a new recipe: http://bit.ly/2xOQ7zs Binge watch a whole bunch of my Asian food recipe videos here: http://bit.ly/2JAKVUg Come chat with me on: https://www.facebook.com/mariongrasby https://www.instagram.com/marionskitchen https://twitter.com/marionskitchen And if you're in the USA, Australia or New Zealand you can buy my premium, all-natural Asian meal kits! You'll find them in the Asian aisle at these stores: http://bit.ly/2sNdNOJ For more super tasty recipes: http://bit.ly/MKrecipes ABOUT MARION Marion Grasby is a food producer, television presenter and cookbook author who's had a life-long love affair with Asian food. Marion is a little bit Thai (courtesy of her mum) and a little bit Australian (courtesy of her dad). Marion lives in Bangkok, Thailand and travels throughout Asia to find the most unique and delicious Asian food recipes, dishes and ingredients.