Taiwanese beef stew, traditional style 紅燒牛肉,台灣口味 is a popular “Taiwanese Street Food”. Most often it is served with thick noodles. Often people also enjoy it with a bowl of rice on the side. Take your pick! Both ways are equally delicious, you could even have boiled potatoes with it too, like people in the west have their beef stew. We hope you enjoy this beef stew, we have it quite frequently. It’s a good dish to cook one day and then refrigerate, it seems to get better and better re-heated!
The ingredients 食材 to serve 4 people, are as follows;
- 1kg of beef, flat rib is our favourite but you can use any stewing beef like shin beef or stewing steak
- 1 onion (we used a red onion)
- 2 medium carrots
- 3 tomatoes, and half a cup of ketchup
- a thumb of ginger
- 3 spring onions tied together
- a little coriander
- one whole chili
- 4 tbsp of soy sauce
- 2 tbsp of rice cooking wine
- oil for browning the meat and onions
- 1 tbsp of sugar

Taiwanese beef stew, cooking
The method 作法;
- chop up all the ingredients
- use a little oil to fry the onion, ginger, chili
- add the carrot and tomato to the frying pan
- add the beef pieces and stir and turn until all of it is browned
- transfer to a deep saucepan
- add the soy sauce, rice wine, ketchup, sugar and cover on a medium heat for about 5 mins
- add boiled water until the food is just covered, turn to a small fire/low heat
- cook for 45 minutes
- before serving sprinkle some chopped spring onion, chili and coriander over the top
- traditionally Taiwanese will have some greens on the side, just boil some and enjoy with rice or noodles

Traditional Taiwanese Beef Stew
As usual Joanne has recorded a cooking video so you can follow the exact method step by step, as she prepares the Taiwanese beef stew, traditional style 紅燒牛肉,台灣口味. It’s only 7 minutes and is well worth a viewing to see how it all comes together.
How to make Taiwanese beef stew, traditional style 紅燒牛肉,台灣口味, cooking video
Stay tuned for more help, advice, cooking and shopping! Next time we will be talking about our new rent-a-chef business, where you can rent “Taiwan Duck” to come and do your cooking one evening!
6 comments
Heather says:
Jan 13, 2013
Hi J
The English instructions don’t match the video instructions, can you help please?
-What are the spices (you say black pepper, thyme, mezz spice (?) and sugar)
-The initial cooking the video says 5 minutes the instruction says 20 minutes
Thank you
mark says:
Jan 13, 2013
“mezz spice” is mixed spice, just a little (optional)
I have corrected the writing; method step number 6 to “5 minutes”.
Thanks for your query!
Pocky says:
Aug 21, 2013
Mark,
What is the Mixed Spice or Mixed Herb?
jj.lymm says:
Aug 21, 2013
Hi, it’s just a little cloth bag of herbs and spice from the Chinese supermarket!
Taiwanese beef stew, traditional style 紅燒牛肉,台灣口味 | CookingPlanet says:
Nov 16, 2013
[…] Taiwanese beef stew, traditional style 紅燒牛肉,台灣口味 […]
H says:
Dec 29, 2013
Mixed spice – at least what I use – is Star Anise, Szechuan peppercorn, black pepper, clove, cinnamon. Probably in that order of quantity. For this amount I would probably use at least two whole heads of star anise (depending on the freshness), 7-8 Szechuan peppercorns, 3-4 cloves, and scant piece of cinnamon stick with several turns of black pepper. Wrap in cheesecloth and you’re good to go. For some, the aroma is a bit too intense (licorice and warm spice), so I would let the bag steep until the aroma is about what you personally prefer – I leave it until ready to serve because I like it really strong.