Blanching Beef and Cold Water vs. Hot Water for Stewing: Achieving Tender and Flavorful Meat

Hello everyone, I'm Guoer Meishi (Fruit Food), meat is a common food on our tables, it can supplement the human body's need for fat and protein. In daily life, the meat foods we most often eat are pork, beef, lamb, and poultry. Among these meat ingredients, pork is almost every day in our family, and besides that, we eat beef more often.

​Should we blanch beef and then put it in cold water, or hot water? The beef cooked in this way is tender and flavorful.

Beef is rich in nutrients, eating more can enhance immunity, strengthen bones, and warm the stomach. Compared to pork, beef has a firmer texture and many cooking methods. The most common methods we use are stir-frying, braising, frying, and stewing. In these methods, my family loves to eat carrot stewed beef.

Carrot stewed beef is cooked by stewing with carrots, which results in tender and soft beef that melts in your mouth. Our family has elderly people and children, and a large pot of this is just right for everyone's taste. However, many people make mistakes when stewing beef, such as using cold water for blanching, which results in beef that is not only smelly but also difficult to cook thoroughly. Today, I'll share the recipe for carrot stewed beef.

Carrot Stewed Beef

Ingredients:Beef, Carrots

Seasoning:Doubanjiang (Fermented Broad Bean Paste), Shaoxing Wine, Star Anise, Sichuan Peppercorns

Steps:

1First, place the beef in water to remove the blood, and change the water 2-3 times during the soaking process. After soaking, cut the beef into chunks;

2Pour the cut beef into a pot of cold water, add a little wine, bring to a boil, then skim off the foam, and set aside. Many people like to put the beef in after the water boils, but beef cooked in hot water is more tender and flavorful. Using cold water to blanch the beef results in beef that is not smelly and tender when cooked.

3Wash the carrots and cut them into chunks.

4Pour oil into a flat-bottom pan, and pour in the beef when the oil is 80% hot, and stir-fry until fragrant.

5Add Doubanjiang and stir-fry until fragrant, then add carrots and Shaoxing wine.

6Add boiling water, add star anise, Sichuan peppercorns, and bring to a boil.

7Transfer the beef to a flat-bottom pan or a clay pot, bring to a boil over high heat, then reduce the heat to medium and simmer for about 2 hours. If you don't have a clay pot, you can use a pressure cooker to cook for about 30 minutes, but the flavor will be better when cooked in a clay pot.

In this dish, there are not many seasonings, which completely preserves the flavor of the beef and the sweetness of the carrots. The longer the beef is simmered, the more tender and flavorful it becomes, and it's suitable for the entire family's taste.

Cooking tips:

1The beef used for stewing is best to choose beef from the belly, also known as beef brisket, because it has a good combination of fat and lean meat, and it tastes very good when cooked.

2The blood removal and blanching steps are both essential. When blanching beef, always use cold water.

3Don't add cold water during the stewing process; use boiling water.

4During the entire cooking process, don’t add salt, because the Doubanjiang has a lot of salt, and the Shaoxing Wine also contains salt. If you like a saltier flavor, you can add salt according to your preference.

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