Bulalo

Beef shank boiled until the marrow slides out, in a broth left clear.

Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, fish sauce.

Ingredients

• 2 kg beef shank, cut across in 4 cm rounds
• 1 onion, quartered
• 1 tablespoon black peppercorns
• 3 litres water
• 3 tablespoons fish sauce
• 2 corn cobs, in thick rounds
• 300 g pechay, separated
• 200 g green beans, topped
• 1 head pak choi

Method

1. ASK FOR THE SHANK CUT ACROSS, so each piece is a round with the marrow sitting in the middle of the bone. Cut along, the marrow has nowhere to stay and ends up in the water.
2. Cover the meat with cold water in a big pot and bring it to a boil. Boil 5 minutes, then pour the whole lot away and rinse both the meat and the pot. This throws out the grey scum that would otherwise cloud everything, and a cloudy bulalo cannot be made clear again.
3. Fresh cold water in, with the onion and peppercorns. Bring it up slowly and then hold it at a bare shiver -- the surface moving but not breaking. A rolling boil emulsifies the fat into the broth and turns it milky.
4. Skim whatever rises for the first 20 minutes, then leave it alone for 2 hours 30 minutes to 3 hours, lid off.
5. It is ready when the meat pulls from the bone under a fork and a skewer pushes the marrow out of the centre in one piece.
6. Fish sauce in now and not before. Salted early, 3 litres reduces down and what was right at the start is too much at the end.
7. Corn in, 10 minutes. Beans in, 4 minutes.
8. Heat off. Pechay and pak choi in, lid on, 2 minutes in the residual heat only. Boiled, the greens go olive and shed water into the broth.
9. Serve with a saucer of fish sauce and crushed chilli, and a narrow spoon for the marrow.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Philippines · All recipes