Chu Hou Braised Beef Brisket (柱侯牛腩)

// SUPPLY LIST

// OPERATIONS

1. 1 Cut the beef naam into 4-5 cm chunks, leaving every layer of fat and every pale seam of tendon in place. Trimming them is the single most common mistake with this dish: the collagen in those seams is what makes the sauce glossy and gives the finished meat its wobble, and lean-only brisket will come out dry and stringy after three hours no matter how carefully you cook it.
2. 2 Put the beef in a 5 L pot, cover with about 2.5 L cold water, add 3 slices of the ginger and 2 tbsp of the Shaoxing, and bring to a boil over high heat, 12-15 minutes for this weight of meat. Boil hard at 100°C/212°F for 3 minutes, skimming off the grey foam as it rises, then drain and rinse each piece under warm running water, rubbing off any clinging scum until the meat looks clean and evenly greyish-brown. Start in cold water, never boiling: a cold start draws the blood and scum out, whereas dropping meat into boiling water seals it in and you will taste it in the sauce all evening. Rinse warm, not cold, so the meat does not seize.
3. 3 Put the tangerine peel in hot water to soak as soon as the beef goes on the heat, and leave it 20 minutes until it is pliable and floppy rather than brittle, then scrape the spongy white pith off the inside with the edge of a teaspoon until only the thin, fragrant orange layer remains. It takes two minutes and it matters: unscraped peel turns the whole braise bitter and medicinal. Starting the soak now means it is ready by the time the pastes go in, rather than holding the pot up later.
4. 4 Heat the peanut oil in a heavy 5-6 L Dutch oven, cast-iron casserole or sand pot over medium heat. A thin, light pan will scorch the paste in the next step. Fry the remaining ginger slices, the crushed garlic, the halved shallots and the spring onion whites for 3-4 minutes, until the shallots are golden at their cut edges and the kitchen smells sweet rather than raw.
5. 5 Turn the heat down to medium-low and add the chu hou paste, ground bean sauce and the mashed fermented bean curd with its brine. Fry, stirring constantly, for 60-90 seconds, until the paste darkens by a shade and a rust-red oil separates out at the edge of the pan. Do not skip this and do not rush it: unfried bean paste stays flatly salty and beany right through the braise, but the sugars in it catch and turn acrid within seconds over high heat, so keep the flame low and the spatula moving.
6. 6 Add the drained beef and turn it in the paste for 2-3 minutes over medium heat until every piece is coated and matte, with no wet-looking patches of raw paste left in the pot. Pour the remaining 90 ml Shaoxing around the hot edge of the pan and let it bubble for 30 seconds until the sharp alcohol smell burns off, then stir in the oyster sauce, dark soy, rock sugar, star anise, cassia bark, bay leaves, cracked white peppercorns and the scraped tangerine peel.
7. 7 Pour in the boiling water — only enough to come just level with the top of the beef and no higher, which for most pots is around 1 to 1.2 litres, so do not tip the lot in without looking. Too much and the sauce will never concentrate to the clinging, glossy consistency the dish is judged on. Bring to a boil, skim once more, then drop to the barest simmer your burner will hold, 90-95°C/194-203°F, where a single bubble breaks the surface every second or two. Cover with the lid slightly ajar and cook for 2 hours, stirring gently every 30 minutes so the bottom does not catch. If your smallest flame still boils, transfer the covered pot to a 150°C/300°F oven instead. A rolling boil at any point will make the lean muscle stringy and dry, and no extra cooking time will bring it back.
8. 8 At 2 hours, test the thickest piece: a bamboo skewer should slide into the lean with no resistance at all, and a seam of tendon should look translucent amber and give like soft jelly when pressed with the back of a spoon. If either is still firm, keep going in 20-minute stretches — 2 1/2 to 3 hours total is entirely normal — topping up with a splash of boiling water only if the liquid falls below the meat.
9. 9 Stir in the daikon, pushing the pieces under the sauce, and simmer uncovered for 30-35 minutes, until a skewer slides in easily but still meets a little resistance at the very core and the chunks are turning faintly translucent at the edges. Stop there rather than cooking it soft: the daikon will finish during tomorrow's reheat, and daikon taken to full tenderness tonight collapses into the sauce overnight. Do not add the daikon at the beginning either — three hours reduces it to mush, and the water it releases early on dilutes the sauce you have spent all afternoon building.
10. 10 Take the pot off the heat and fish out the star anise, cassia, bay leaves and tangerine peel. Cool for an hour, uncovered, until the steam has stopped rising, then refrigerate overnight — at least 8 hours and up to 2 days. Every noodle shop in Hong Kong cooks this a day ahead, and this is the one place the home version should copy them exactly: the collagen sets, the fermented paste stops tasting like separate salty parts, and the fat lifts off in the morning as a firm cap. If you genuinely must serve it the same day, rest it 30 minutes off the heat and spoon the fat off the surface, but accept that it will taste younger and thinner.
11. 11 Lift off and discard most of the set fat cap, leaving 2 tablespoons behind for gloss, and reheat over low heat for 25-35 minutes — a fridge-cold pot of this weight takes longer than you think — until it is barely bubbling at the edges and a chunk pulled from the middle is hot all the way through. Shake the pot rather than stirring hard, so the beef does not collapse. If the sauce is thinner than you want, lift the meat and daikon out with a slotted spoon and boil the liquid for 5-8 minutes until it naps the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when you draw a finger through it. There is more than enough gelatin here that it never needs a cornstarch slurry, and adding one gives it the gluey, dulled taste of a bad takeaway. Now taste the sauce properly against a plain spoonful of rice, where it should read frankly savoury rather than merely brown: adjust with a small piece of rock sugar for roundness, or a teaspoon more oyster sauce for salt, remembering the pastes lose their edge over a long braise.
12. 12 Serve hot, scattered with the sliced spring onion greens and coriander: over steamed jasmine rice, or ladled over blanched flat rice noodles (河粉) or a nest of e-fu noodles in a deep bowl with a few spoonfuls of the sauce. Put the chilli oil and a small dish of hot yellow mustard on the table, as the dai pai dong do, and let people add their own — the braise itself carries no chilli heat at all.

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