Beef in Wine: Tender Braised Beef with Star Anise and Ginger

Name: Braised Beef in Wine with Star Anise and Ginger
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 2 h
Total time: 2 h 15 min
Cuisine: Chinese cuisine
Ingredients: Beef 500 g; Dry white wine 1 cup (200 ml); Mirin or sweet wine 1 cup (200 ml); Wine vinegar 2 tbsp; Natural soy sauce 2 tbsp; Star anise, fresh ginger, green onion, chili, Sichuan pepper Spices:

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2 h 15 mins

Meat braised in a sauce, in its own juices, meat in wine. Among the huge variety of meat dishes, braised meat recipes are probably the most common. Various vegetables and herbs are often added to the meat. First, they provide the liquid needed for long braising, and second, they end up as a tasty sauce or gravy for the meat.

Certain cuts of meat need extra treatment before cooking. In the vast majority of cases that means pounding and marinating, the aim being to make the meat less tough. But braising lets you make even the toughest cuts very soft and even tender. Braised beef, although it takes quite long to cook, can be more tender than even the youngest veal. Meat in wine is large or portion-sized pieces of braised beef. The dish is quite simple, but the cooking takes a long time. In essence, it is beef braised in a marinade with added spices and wine, or a wine-based mixture.

Soy sauce is widely used in Southeast Asia. It goes into marinades, it is used to make sauces, and it is simply an ingredient in many dishes. Soy sauce is one of the main components of Asian cuisines. The production technology seems simple, fermenting beans and grains, yet what usually reaches the shops is a chemical cocktail. Still, you can always find a natural product. A remarkable property of soy sauce is that it brings out the flavor of dishes brilliantly, thanks to its natural glutamic acid. Many people have noticed the ingredients of packaged store-bought sauces and spice blends. They usually contain glutamate, the very unnatural flavor enhancer.

In Japan, the famous teriyaki is made from soy sauce. Strictly speaking, teriyaki is a way of cooking food in a sweet sauce based on soy sauce and sugar, which gives the finished dish a beautiful dark “glaze.” The teriyaki sauce is made from soy sauce and sugar with sake and mirin. Here, though, people call teriyaki anything cooked with such a sweetish sauce, or with the sauce used as a marinade. It is delicious to make pork teriyaki.

Using a mixture of soy sauce, ordinary table wine, spices and sugar (which can easily be replaced by mirin or sweet wine) is a perfectly good way to marinate meat for the grill. Meat in wine, or in a mixture with a sweet flavor, becomes exquisitely tasty and can be a great base for a picnic.

Beef in a marinade of soy sauce and sweet wine gets not only a superb flavor but also a beautiful dark, glossy look.

Meat in wine is braised beef in a sweet, spicy mixture of wine, soy sauce and Eastern spices. Despite the long cooking process, the meat is very tasty and tender on its own. It is also a wonderful way to prepare cold sliced meat for a festive table or as a filling for sandwiches.

6 ingredientsTo the recipe

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Ingredients

4 servings

Beef 500 g
Dry white wine 1 cup
(200 ml)
Mirin or sweet wine 1 cup
(200 ml)
Wine vinegar 2 tbsp
Natural soy sauce 2 tbsp
Star anise, fresh ginger, green onion, chili, Sichuan pepper Spices:

Step-by-step recipe

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Meat in wine can be made from practically any cut of beef, however tough. What matters is that the beef has minimal fat, no bones, and comes in a large piece, not a thin steak or bite-sized goulash chunks. The best result comes from pieces weighing 300-400 g. Pieces of a kilogram turn out excellent too, though you may need more of the wine mixture and a longer cooking time.
The beef is cooked with somewhat exotic Eastern spices, which are nevertheless available in stores. Sichuan pepper is little used here, if at all. These are peppercorn-like dried fruits of a plant of the rue family, Zanthoxylum, an amazingly aromatic spice with an unusual sweet and burning taste and a barely perceptible sourness. I think you can roughly replace Sichuan pepper with a mix of ordinary black peppercorns, allspice and cloves. Star anise, or ordinary anise seeds, are always available. Ginger is sold almost everywhere.
Mirin is a very sweet rice wine. For some reason people here think it is rice vinegar. That is wrong. I would say mirin is rather a cloying liqueur with low alcohol content and no distinct “filling” flavor. An alcoholic syrup that is easy to replace with a very, very sweet white wine with added sugar.
The beef cooks for quite a long time, so there must be enough of the wine mixture. Mix equal parts of dry white wine, mirin (or sweet white wine with added sugar) and water. For every 0.5 l of the wine mixture, add 2 tbsp wine vinegar and 2 tbsp natural soy sauce.
Wash the beef and trim off any remaining fat, bones and connective tissue. If a piece is large, cut it into pieces of at least 300 g. You should end up with evenly sized, roughly rounded pieces. Place the pieces in a large heavy-bottomed pot. A thick bottom holds the temperature very well and evenly, which matters when meat is braised over low heat. Ceramic pots are ideal.
Add 12-15 Sichuan peppercorns, or 0.5 tsp black peppercorns and 1-2 allspice berries (add 1 clove if you like). Put 1-2 stars of star anise in the pot, or add 0.5 tsp anise seeds, though star anise is preferable. If you like, add 2-3 dried chili peppers. By the way, note (!) that you do not need to add salt. Peel the fresh ginger root and slice it very thinly with a sharp knife. Add the sliced ginger and green onion stalks to the meat. You do not need to cut the onion, just tear it in half to fit the pot.
Pour the wine mixture over the beef so that the meat is almost covered. That finishes the preparation.
Put the pot with the meat and wine mixture on the heat and bring the liquid to a boil. Then cover the pot with a lid and turn the heat down to the minimum.
The beef will cook for a long time at a gentle simmer. Cooking time is roughly 2 hours or more. Strictly speaking, the longer the beef braises in wine, the juicier and tastier it will be.
Important! While cooking, turn the meat every 15-20 mins. This makes the pieces cook evenly. Also watch the liquid level in the pot. You can top up with the wine mixture or plain water in small portions. If the meat is in rather large pieces, watching the liquid is strictly necessary.
You do not need to check whether the meat is done, since this cooking time is guaranteed to be enough. It is better to go by time: pieces of 0.3 kg take 2 hours, 0.5 kg take 2.5 hours, and a kilogram or more takes 3 hours or longer.
When the meat in wine is completely done, drain off all the wine marinade and cool the meat in a dry pot. As it cools, the wine mixture sets just as well as homemade aspic. If the meat stays in the wine mixture, you get beef in jelly. By the way, the wine mixture left after braising the meat is excellent for marinating cod and chicken. Just warm it up a little first in the microwave.
Once cooled, slice the meat thinly across the grain with a sharp knife. This meat makes excellent sandwiches. I think a meat platter for the New Year table would turn out very well too. In China, meat cooked this way is added to noodle soup. We tried it and liked it.
Meat in wine is very tasty with fresh bread and mustard. In fact, cold beef with mustard is delicious whichever way it is cooked.