Chinese slow-cooked beef

This low-effort dish slow-cooks the beef until it melts in the mouth – and it can easily be cooked ahead of time and reheated when time is short.

Preparation time:  Around 10 minutes

Cooking time:  Around 2 ½ hours

Although this takes a good few hours to slow-cook, it requires less than 10 minutes of preparation time, and is a great meal to cook in advance at the weekend and keep ready for a quick weekday menu option.

Ingredients (serves 2):

• Braising/stewing beef (such as chuck, skirt, leg or flank) – 500g, diced into large cubes
• Garlic – 4 cloves, crushed
• Root ginger – 1 tbsp., finely chopped
• Red chilli – 4 (or to taste), finely chopped
• Chinese five-spice – 2 tsp.
• Brown sugar – 1 tbsp.
• Chinese rice wine – 4 tbsp. (or substitute with dry pale sherry if you don’t have any)
• Soy sauce – 2 tbsp.
• Water – 200ml
• Spring onions – 1 bunch, mostly sliced into 1 inch pieces, but some shredded for garnish
• Rice – to serve

Method:

1. Pre-heat the oven to 150C (or 130C for a fan oven);
2. Heat a little oil in an over-proof casserole pot, then briefly fry the beef pieces to colour them all.  Add the garlic, ginger and chilli then fry for another minute, before adding the five-spice, brown sugar, rice wine, soy sauce and water.  Mix together, put the lid on then transfer to the oven;
3. Cook for around 2 ½ hours, until the beef is practically falling apart.  Remove from the oven, add the spring onion pieces and return to the hob over a low heat while you cook the rice accompaniment;
4. At this stage, you’ll need to make a judgment call about the consistency of the sauce.  If it’s too thick, or there’s not enough of it, try adding a little more water.  If the sauce is too thin for your liking, try adding a little cornflour to thicken it up;
5. Once the rice is cooked and the sauce is the preferred consistency, divide the rice between two bowls, top with the beef and sauce, and then garnish with the reserved shredded spring onions.

Chinese slow-cooked beef