I was a vegetarian for 10 years and fell off the bandwagon during the pandemic for, well..."ah fuck it" reasons. I cook almost every day of the week and when I use meat, it's as an ingredient like any other, not the star of the dish, which is common in a lot of Chinese cooking, which is what I learned from my mother at home. This last September I finished reading Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead by Olga Tokarczuk and decided it may be time to revisit vegetarianism. G isn't picky and never been a steak kind of guy. I'd only really miss the ground pork in mapo dofu, but I did a decent shiitake version for years.
Anyway, here's a beef recipe for the winter. You'll need an instant pot or pressure cooker and 3 hours of your time.
1st Wave of Ingredients
2lbs beef shank
3in thumb of ginger, peeled
2 star anise
1 big onion, chopped
3 cloves garlic, smashed
28oz can of diced tomatoes
7 cups of water (28oz tomato can filled twice) or a box of beef stock
if you use water, 3 tsps of better than beef bouillon
3 tbsp soy sauce
1 tsp thyme
one small rock sugar or 2 tsp cane sugar
1. Salt and pepper each side of your shanks and brown the first side in a crockpot or instant pot on the high sauté setting.
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| browning in the instant pot |
2. When you flip to brown the other side of the shanks, throw in your thumb of ginger, garlic, chopped onion on top and let cook until the shanks have a nice crust on both sides.
3. Add the can of tomatoes and your broth or water and bouillon, soys sauce, thyme and sugar, then cover and pressure cook on high for 40 min.
4. release the valve manually when the timer goes off.
2nd Wave
3 carrots, chopped into hearty bites
1/2lb daikon radish, chopped into hearty bites
1/2lb russet potatoes, chopped into hearty bites
1/2 a small cabbage, chopped
2 celery stalks, diced
6 baby bella mushrooms, quartered
extra broth if necessary
5. Open the lid (or if you want to a wait, 20 min before you're ready to sit down and eat) and throw in the 2nd wave of ingredients, add more water to cover the veg and replace the lid and pressure cook on high for 5 minutes.
3rd Wave
2 tbsp Chinese black vinegar (white vinegar is fine too)
salt and pepper to taste
6. Manually release, open lid, fish out and discard the ginger knob, anise pods, and the shank bones, which the meat will have fallen off of, while making sure to get all the marrow from inside them.
7. Add the vinegar. You can add water or broth here but taste as you go so you don't dilute the flavor too much. Salt and pepper to taste and serve.