Five-Spice Beef
With the smell of spice wafting through the air, your kitchen is going to feel extra festive as you braise some five-spice beef this holiday season. Zoe Yang brings us this super versatile recipe—cook it once, serve it multiple ways—along with the spicy history of its origins.
"China, where pork is king, is not usually known for beef, yet there is one beef dish that is practically ubiquitous, found everywhere from Nanjing to Beijing, on fine restaurant menus and wet-market steam tables. This dish is five-spice beef (wǔxiāng niúròu, 五香牛肉), sometimes also simply called braised beef (jiàng niúròu, 酱牛肉). It’s a pretty simple dish: just a hunk of beef—usually the tough but rewarding shank—that is slowly braised in a melange of spices and sauces until it is deeply flavored and toothsome.
"I think the reason five-spice beef is so immensely popular is that it’s such a versatile dish. Cooks all across the country have adapted it to suit their own palates: In Sichuan, people may throw a handful of dried chilies in the braising liquid, or perhaps add some doubanjiang. In the South, there are variations that include fermented tofu and/or dried tangerine peel.
"This versatility also extends to how it’s served: In Shanghainese restaurants, you’ll find five-spiced beef sliced and served simply, as part of a cold appetizer (凉菜) suite that might also include smoked fish and drunken chicken. In Dongbei restaurants, you’ll see it stuffed inside shao bing or dressed with punchy black vinegar and garlic as a salad (as in the photo above). And at humble noodle stands across the country, you can find it used as a topping for soup noodles" (as in the photo at the very top).
Zoe then delves into a search for the origins of five-spice beef and finds a tale of a Hui Muslim cook whose braised meat "became a foodie status item among the Beijing elite; Empress Dowager Cixi is said to have been extra fond of it....
"When it comes to spices, I like to stay close to the dish’s Northern Chinese Muslim roots, so that’s the interpretation you’ll find here. The old hands at Lao Fan Gu claim that the imperial version of five-spice beef—the version the palace chefs would have made for Qianlong and Cixi—had a number of Chinese medicinal ingredients. They probably did this to be fancy and because beef is considered nutritious and beneficial to health in Traditional Chinese Medicine."
Zoe advises just sticking with whole-spice five spice, such as The Mala Market's. Her recipe is relatively easy, but cedes nothing on taste.
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