Chinese Beef Brisket with Daikon - Chu Hou Sauce

Hey everyone, I'm Flo. Dude is behind the camera. And we're all about simple food, simple faith. We're making a Chihao beef brisket and daikon that can be found in my cookbook, Daily Special. If you don't yet have this cookbook, you can find the link in the description below. It makes a great gift. It's just filled with simple Chinese recipes that you can make at home. I'm starting with the daikon, and I've already peeled it. And daikon is the best time to eat it now in the winter because it's in season, and you'll find that they are the sweetest in wintertime. And because the weather is getting colder, it's actually perfect for the stew that we're making. Cutting them into two-inch pieces. I'm using the pressure cooker today, so I'm going to leave the pieces quite large as I don't want them to overcook. I'm going to blanch these in a pot of boiling water for about five minutes because it takes away any bitterness that the daikon may have. And when you cook them in the stew, they'll be much sweeter. So it's really worth doing this step. In the meantime, I'm just going to keep prepping my vegetables. So I've decided to add a carrot to the stew as well. So I'm going to add this giant carrot. Carrots take longer to cook, so it's okay to keep the pieces smaller than the daikon, but still quite big. I have two pieces of ginger. It's about two ounces, and I'm just going to slice them up. I have three giant cloves of garlic. You'll probably need about six instead of three. Up to you. You can use as little or as much as you like. I wanted to smash it so that it'd be easier to chop, but maybe it won't. Well, so much for that idea. It's okay. I can still chop it up finely. I was trying to save my wrists instead of using the back or the flat side of the knife to pound them flat. All right. I think this is good enough. I'm also going to add two green onions. Cutting off the butts. Cutting them into two-inch pieces. And this will be used as garnish at the end. If you like this video, please click the like button and subscribe because it really does help the channel. In the Chinese restaurants, they always call this dish beef brisket, but I am convinced that they are actually using finger meat. The finger meat comes like this. They are the long strips in between the ribs of a cow. So, in fact, they're kind of like a short rib. And they always come vacuum sealed like this, whether fresh or frozen. And I can usually find these in the Asian market. I have found it in a regular supermarket once. So I guess they're called finger meat because they look like strips of fingers. Like a finger. But I guess in a Chinese restaurant, the translation to brisket is way better than finger meat. So I've taken the daikon out of the pot of water. I've also dumped the water. And now I'm heating up another pot of water in the same pot. I didn't wash it. I just wanted to do the cleaner blanching first. And I am going to blanch the beef. I'm going to try to cut these down into equal sized pieces. Sometimes it's skinnier on one end than the other. If you don't have finger meat, you can't find it, you can always use a short rib. This is essentially the same, but it's not very pretty. Finger meat is a little bit on the fatty side. So the obvious pieces of fat that I can remove, I try to remove it. The reason why we're blanching or parboiling is because we want to remove all the impurities from the meat. However, if you don't do it, just know that it might be the soup part of it might be cloudy. And it would be because of the stuff that kind of comes out and floats around. So we're going to try to get rid of some of it. But if you don't want to do the parboiling, it will still taste fine. Alright, I just wanted to show you why we parboil. So this was five minutes in boiling water. And look at all this kind of scummy stuff that floats to the top. So if you decide you're going to cook it without parboiling, again, it's going to taste fine. But I think it's worth taking this extra step. And you all know, I can't be bothered with much, but this, I will bother. So I drained and rinsed the meat under cold water and put it in a clean bowl. And they're ready to go. Moving on to the sauce. I'm using a quarter cup of Shaoxing wine. Shaoxing wine is a rice wine and cooking wine. You can find it in the supermarket. If you don't have Shaoxing wine, you can use regular rice wine or sherry. We've been known to use bourbon. We just need something to elevate the flavors. Two tablespoons of soy sauce, just regular soy or light soy. One tablespoon of dark soy sauce. Dark soy sauce adds color. One tablespoon of oyster sauce. Oyster sauce adds umami. And two tablespoons of trehal paste. Trehal paste you can buy in the Asian supermarkets. This is what gives it, well, its trehal name. And that's it for our sauce. All right, we are using my electric pressure cooker today because I believe in using the best tool for the job. It will only take about 35 minutes of cook time. If you're going to do this on the stove, it can take up to an hour and a half to two hours. And you'll also have to add four to six cups of water depending on the size of your pot. So we want the meat and all the ingredients to be covered with water if you're doing it on the stovetop. With the pressure cooker, I don't have to add any water. There's enough liquid in the sauce to make it come up to pressure. Adding the meat. We're also adding some spices. I'm going to put them in a disposable teabag. Maybe not the cinnamon stick. That can go in. Actually, rock sugar can also go in. About a tablespoon of rock sugar. If you don't have rock sugar, you can use regular sugar. I am going to put my star anise into a disposable teabag though because sometimes they break up and the worst is biting into star anise when you're eating. So these will be easy to fish out afterwards. So put that in there. I'm also adding my ginger. Trying to tuck them in to the meat. My garlic. Look at all this garlic. Just evenly disperse that as well. Carrots. Daikon. And last but not least, the sauce. Just kind of drizzle it over evenly. Okay, putting the lid on. Locking it into place. Making sure the sealing knob is on a ceiling. And we're going to cook it on high pressure for 35 minutes. And that's it. See you in a bit. So it's done cooking and after all these years, this part still freaks me out. So release the pressure. Whoops. The cat's just freaked right out. You can quick release the pressure like I just did, or you can let it naturally release. Let's see what we've got. Oh my goodness, this smells so, so good. I'm going to take out some of the ingredients because there's a lot of fat in there, guys. So you want to get rid of some of that. While I see it, I'm going to take out this packet of star anise and cinnamon stick as well. Okay, do you see all this fat, guys? This is all fat. Look at that. The dark stuff you see at the bottom, that's sauce. So we want to remove as much fat as possible. All right, so there was quite a bit of fat. You don't want to eat that. And I'm going to remove some more of the stuff so that I can thicken the liquid at the bottom. Look at all the liquid that was produced from the meat and from the vegetables. So that's why we didn't have to add any more water to the cooker when it was cooking. But of course, on the stovetop, you do need to add the water because the water will evaporate as it cooks. Okay, so I took out everything and I want to thicken the sauce. So I'm going to turn my pot on to saute. Let that heat up. In the meantime, I'm going to make a slurry. I want about two tablespoons of cornstarch, adding about two tablespoons of water. Remember, it has to be cool or room temperature water. Otherwise, the cornstarch will just thicken up and be one giant clump. So we don't want to do that. It only dissolves in cool or room temperature water. Once the sauce starts to simmer, you're going to add your cornstarch slurry. You have to heat it through and wait for it to thicken. It should only take about a minute. All right, see how the sauce has thickened? It's like a gravy now. We're going to add our green onions into the sauce just to heat them through. And you just want them to wilt a bit. Okay, turning off the saute mode. And we're just going to spoon this over the meat and the daikon and carrots. And with the pieces of ginger, you can either keep the ginger in there, because some people like to eat it, or you can pick them out. Totally up to you. Look at all that garlic. All right, are you all ready for? I would lift this bowl up, but I'd wind up burning my hands. I'm dude, this is the taste. This bowl of brisket in a restaurant, half the portion, 25-30 bucks. Rice is cooking, and it's going to be a yummo dinner. Oh, I didn't show you guys how I can split the carrot. It still has enough structure, but using my chopsticks, I can portion it out. Same thing with the daikon. That's awesome. So you get presentation, you get the texture, mouthfeel, and without becoming mush. Good. So tender, sweet. Sauce is so umami, delish. Wow, check it out, that beef. It's tender. Tender finger meat. Yeah. Oh, it's coming apart. Get in there. Good. Oh, so tender. And so flavorful. A perfect meal on a cool rainy day like today in Vancouver. Do it. Awesome. Thanks dude. All right, I am convinced that the restaurants are using finger meat because it used to be a cheaper cut, but now everything's so expensive. Anyways, I was able to find finger meat for $10 a pound, which is what we're paying for ground beef these days. You can find this recipe in my cookbook, Daily Special, or check it out on the website, phloem.com.