Recipe: Mother of all beef noodle soups (or beef noodle soup of all the mothers) (2024)

Recipe: Mother of all beef noodle soups (or beef noodle soup of all themothers)

March 8, 2010 by bea

[Updated 3/21/2012 with substitutions.]

Mmmmm…. my house is filled with the mingled scents of star anise, beef, and soy sauce.

I got this Taiwanese beef noodle soup recipe from Cindy, who melded together recipes from Joy’s mom (through Joy), Cindy’s mom, and JT’s mom. That’s a lot of moms — I figured this recipe would probably be pretty awesome. On top of that, when Cindy made it for her housemates, it came out to 50 cents a serving! That clinched it — I knew I’d have to try it.

Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup (adapted from Cindy’s recipe, updated with substitutions)

Makes 4-5 servings.

Ingredients:

1-2 lbs beef shank, cut into 1″ chunks (I used 1.25 lbs) — or other stew-appropriate cuts of beef, like beef chuck

1 T oil
1″ ginger, peeled and sliced
5 medium cloves garlic, minced
2 scallions, chopped
2 star anise

2 T chili bean sauce (dou ban jiang)
1/4 c light soy sauce — I use Kikkoman low-sodium
1/4 c dark soy sauce — I use Pearl River or Amoy brand

1 beef leg bone segment — optional if you can’t find one

half a 14-oz can of diced tomatoes — or1 large tomato, cut into bite-sized chunks
2 carrots, cut into bite-sized chunks
1/4 c rice cooking wine
1/4 c rock sugar pieces — optional, or use a bit less brown sugar
2 pickled red chili peppers, sliced lengthwise, seeds intact — omit for less spiciness
fresh ground black pepper

noodles (I used some leftover fresh noodles from jjajangmyun, but the classic choice is wheat noodles shaped like linguine)

Instructions:

1. (Optional) Soak the beef shank pieces in hot water for about 5 minutes or until medium rare, to get the blood out. Drain. This makes the broth clearer and a little less rich.
2. Heat oil in a 5 quart pot over medium heat, and saute the ginger, garlic, scallions, and star anise until fragrant.
3. Add beef shank pieces and chili bean sauce, and saute a few minutes, to brown the beef a little. It’s not important to sear the meat — I just dump it all in at once and stir occasionally until the outsides aren’t raw. I’m sure it’d be even tastier if I took the time to sear, but I never have.
4. Add light and dark soy sauces, stir, and cook for 2 minutes.
5. Add beef bone segment and all remaining ingredients (except noodles). Add water until just covered, about 1 1/3 cups.
6. Bring to boil over medium-high heat, then reduce heat to low or medium-low and simmer gently, partly covered, for 2.5 hours, or until the beef shank is tender.
7. Meanwhile, cook and drain noodles.
8. When soup is done, serve in bowls over noodles. Optional: serve with boiled napa cabbage, pickled mustard greens, or fresh chopped cilantro.

This was really, really easy and oh, so good. I made it on the stove this first time, so I could control the simmering better (control freak? me?), but next time I’ll try the slow cooker.

My simmering time was 2.5 hours, though it’s possible the beef shank was tender before then. At 1 hour, the beef was still tough, and I didn’t check again until the 2.5 hour mark. By then the beef was soft and melty.

Thanks, Cindy! This one is definitely going into my recipe rotation.

Random notes:

• What’s with all this soaking of meat to get rid of the blood? Don’t we want the iron? I’d never seen this in a recipe before, until I made this and the pork bone soup. Still, here’s what the beef looks like after soaking in hot water:

  

  Beef shank after soaking in hot water. Clearly, not all the blood is gone... still turned out fine.

• Do you know how many combinations of chili and bean have been made into Chinese sauces? Just take a stroll down the sauce aisle at 88 sometime. I can’t read chinese (well, I can read “bean”, but that doesn’t help much), so while I was looking for the chili bean sauce, I had to hope that the label would have a phonetic translation. Luckily, Lee Kum Kee understands my problem:

  

  See Also

  A & W Coney Dog recipe

  Thank you, Lee Kum Kee, for providing the phonetic translation!

• Until this recipe, I had never shopped for beef leg bones. Much like the chili bean sauce, there are many bones at 88: some are not beef, some are not legs. However, because I am a highly educated person of Asian heritage, I was able to find it under the helpful sign, “Beef femur”. (Sorry, no picture. I was greatly amused, but I didn’t have my camera.) Anyway, I found the leg bones shrink-wrapped on styrofoam trays in the horizontal open refrigerated cases at the back of 88. They look like this:

  

  Beef femur! I can make 4 more batches of beef noodle soup with these...

  For scale, here’s one on my cutting board. No, my big 8″ chef knife was NOT used to chop up this sucker:

  

  Huge, isn't it? I guess cows must be pretty big.

• These are the pickled red chili peppers I used. I confess I picked them because I liked the shape of the jar. See how cute?

  

  Cute jar of pickled red chili peppers!

  Unfortunately, I didn’t notice this until I had already added them to the soup:

  

  Wait, isn't it March of 2010 now?

  Oops. Oh well, at least nobody got sick….

• Note to self:use a big cutting board. If you’re too lazy to wash it, you know you can always put it in the dishwasher. It’s better than having to use a cutting board that’s way too small for your purposes:

  

  I could barely get the knife onto this little cutting board to chop the scallions. This is not the first time I have tried to learn this lesson.

• A couple pictures of the cooking process:

  

  Pretty, pretty star anise sauteing with ginger, garlic, and scallions.

  

  All the ingredients in the pot, before covering with water and simmering for 2.5 hours.