Vietnamese Beef Stew

Beef cooked with lemongrass, ginger, star anise and Chinese five-spice powder, among others. Vietnamese beef stew is highly aromatic and tasty! Serve with rice, noodles or bread.

The first time I cooked Vietnamese beef stew, I had to deconstruct it from a restaurant dish. I had to trust my taste buds to know what spices went in it and guess what the cooking procedure was.

This one is based on a recipe by Andrea Nguyen. As it turns out, my old deconstructed version of Vietnamese beef stew was almost authentic except for one ingredient — lemongrass.

Unlike Andrea Nguyen’s recipe however which uses beef chuck (more readily available in the States, according to her), our Vietnamese beef stew uses bone-in beef. Another modification is the use of broth instead of water.

So, what are the steps in making Vietnamese beef stew? The fact that it’s a stew means long and slow cooking. But even before you get to the stewing part, there are three things you have to do to make sure that the dish will come out tasty.

First, marinate the beef. Do not skip this part. You want the beef to be flavored all the way to the center of each piece. I marinate the beef overnight in the fridge.

Second, brown the beef (reserve the marinade). In Asia, the default preparation of meat for stewing is to parboil it to remove inpurities. But this is Vietnamese cooking, heavily influenced by French techniques, so browning the beef is, for me, the better option.

The third thing is the spice base. You will need patience with this step. Saute sliced shallots until softened then add the reserved marinade with all the spices in it. Cook down the mixture, slowly and stirring often, until quite dry to heighten the flavors.

Creating the spice base continues after the addition of tomatoes. Tomato puree, in my case, which is nothing fancy, really. If you can’t get tomato puree in a can or jar, just puree chopped tomatoes in the blender.

Tomatoes contain a lot of water. I allow the mixture to cook, watching it with hawk eyes to prevent scorching, until the mixture forms into a paste. Meaning, it’s thick enough that when you drag a spatula across the bottom of the pan, a trench (or a ditch, if trench is something you associate with warfare) is created and the mixture does not easily flow back to cover it. Can you imagine the concentrated flavors at this point?

When you have your beautiful spice base, it’s time to cook the beef in it. But because the spice base is much too thick for the long and slow cooking that the beef requires, you add more liquid. Water is more convenient (and cheaper) but if you want full-bodied flavor, use broth.

I add the carrot after the beef has been simmering for over an hour. Carrot does not take long to cook, twenty minutes and the pieces should be tender enough to mash with the back of a fork, but because I want the sweetness of the carrot to bleed into the sauce, I add them early enough so that the carrot pieces cook with the beef for at least an hour.

And, that’s it! No special equipment required. No fancy skills either. You may even modify the procedure according to how you normally cook beef stew. But to make it real Vietnamese beef stew, use the correct ingredients. The herbs, spices and the fish sauce are truly indispensable.

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