A long, slow simmer in soy sauce and spices turns beef shanks into meaty, gelatinous goodness. Easy to meal prep, and the sauce gets better the more you reuse it.

Time: 5/5
Involves a long braise and an overnight stay in the fridge, but it’s mostly passive time.

Effort: 3/5
Don’t let the long ingredient list fool you, this is a super efficient way to make a lot of food at once.

Come On You Apes, You Wanna Sauce Forever?

Every culture has their version of a perpetual stew. Like the hunter’s pot of Europe, or this 50 year old beef and goat noodle soup in Bangkok. You add things in, you take things out, and replenish ingredients as needed as it cooks and matures over ages.

The Cantonese version of a forever soup is 鹵水 – variously translated as lo shui / lo sui / lushui and sometimes referred to as Chinese Master Stock. It’s essentially a soy sauce based stock that’s enhanced with sugar, spices, and the various meats that you braise in it.

After every use, you boil it and store it in the fridge for next time (or the freezer, if you won’t be using it again for a month) and it gets better and better. Actually, I’m pretty sure there was a Cantonese soap opera plot line where one of two feuding restaurants try to ruin their rival by spoiling the lo sui base that was passed down the generations.

Once you have a master stock going, you can cook all sorts of things with it. The typical suspects are cuts of meat with plenty of connective tissue like chicken wings, but you can also marinade tofu and hard boiled eggs in the lo sui as well. And like all stews, it scales up really well for meal prep.

My favourite thing to cook in lo sui are boneless beef shanks. All the collagen in the tendons break down to create a gelatinous, unctuous mouthfeel. Beef shanks are also pretty lean, which is great because it means I can fit a lot of protein into a meal with lots of calories left over to enjoy the braising liquid by ladling it over plenty of rice.

Even though most of the braising process is passive, it takes time to break down the tendons in the shanks, and it’s much easier to get clean, thin cuts if you chill the meat in the fridge overnight. So it’s a meal prep that takes some forethought, but not that much effort. 

And because I have a heat-retaining vacuum pot, the cooking process is even more hands-free! I just bring the pot to a simmer, place it into a giant thermos, then I am free to walk away and do whatever I want for the next couple of hours. It’s the same method I use to save gas and effort for my Beef Cheek Goulash.

When you look at the step by step pictures, keep in mind that I already have a lo sui stock going on, so I am starting with that. But I will still give the ingredients and instructions as if I was starting from scratch, so you can follow along. You might also be able to find a pre-made lo sui stock at the store or online – something like this.

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 0

Dramatis Personae

Served 5.

For the pre-blanche

• 900g boneless beef shank
• A few slices of ginger
• A few sprigs of scallions
• Enough water to cover the beef

For the braising liquid

• 200ml light soy sauce
• 50ml dark soy sauce
• 750ml water
• 50g sugar
• 2 sticks of cinnamon or cassia bark
• 4 pieces of star anise
• A few bay leaves

Some lo sui recipes have Shaoxing wine, Szechuan peppercorns, dried tangerine peel, wolf berries and all sorts of other obscure ingredients. No two lo sui stocks are the same (no man cooks with the same lo sui twice either), this is how I make mine and I like it despite its relative simplicity.

For vegetables 

• 600g sugar snap peas
• 2 cups fresh shiitake mushrooms

Always eat your veggies! Fresh shiitakes are great in a zucchini stir fry, and they’re great with sugar snap peas too.

Executive summary

1. Place beef shanks, ginger and scallions in the pot. Cover with cold water, and gradually bring to a simmer.
2. Once at a simmer, remove the shanks and wash well. Discard the blanching liquid and aromatics, and scrub the pot clean.
3. Place herbs in a teabag, or a tied-off cheesecloth. Place in the clean pot, alon with the shanks and braising liquid ingredients.
4. Bring the pot to a simmer again, simmer everything for 2-3 hours or until the shanks are tender.
5. Allow everything to cool down, and refrigerate overnight.
6. The next day, make rice and stir fry the vegetables. In the meantime, retrieve the cold shanks and cut into thin pieces.
7. Warm up some of the sauce, spoon over the pieces of shank, and serve. Save the rest of the sauce in the fridge or freezer.

Play by Play

Some aromatics to help get rid of the gamey smell that can come with red meat sometimes. No fancy knife work here, just making sure everything fits in the pot.

The pre-blanche draws out some of the proteins that would otherwise cloud the stock. Start in cold water and let it come up to a simmer very slowly, to allow plenty of time for the gunk to come out. This took me a good 15 minutes or so.

The cow definitely didn’t skip leg day! Give the shanks a good wash, and rinse the pot thoroughly too.

This is where your steps may differ from mine. I already had a lo sui base, so I just chucked it in the pot. If this is your first time, this is where you add the lo sui ingredients into the pot with the shanks and bring it up to a simmer.

Now that the shanks are safely simmering in the vacuum pot, I’m free to go out for breakfast and groceries. I’ll come back, boil the lo sui again, get some chores done, then check the shanks for doneness.

About three hours in, and the shanks will be readily pierced by a chopstick. That’s when I know it’s ready.

I let mine cool down, then stuck it in the fridge overnight to chill. Check out the glass jar to the left with some homemade kimchi, left over from my kimchi jiggae.

Here I am the next day, regretting that I didn’t chill the shanks and the sauce separately. The lo sui is now gelatinous and jiggly, which is good, but that means it took some effort to extract the beef.

Always clean your veggies! After a thorough rinse, I like to remove the stringy bits, two at a time, by twisting off the stem end and unzipping the pods. Work your way through all of the pods. This is a great step for kids or other helpers to chip in, by the way.

The pods are de-stringed, the fresh shiitakes are cut to size, and the garlic is roughly minced. We’re ready to stir fry!

I like to give the shiitake mushrooms a head start, because they taste much better with a bit of browning and they can’t get over cooked. Sugar snap peas don’t shrink much during cooking, so the volume you get raw is about how much you’ll end up with.

All that’s left to do is warm up some of the lo sui sauce so it can be poured over the shanks, and it’s time to eat!

I’m pretty proud of this. Plenty of wok hei on the mushrooms, and tender meaty pieces of beef. Bon appetit!

Keep browsing by categories, or by tags: