Taiwanese Beef & Noodle Soup

This is a recipe I made in my electric pressure cooker. But it can also be cooked on the stove top.

Pressure cooker takes 30-minutes to cook.
Stove top takes about 2-hours to cook.

The instructions below are for pressure cooking:

First, let’s wash the beef. Chop it up into bite sized pieces and then put all of the chopped beef shank into the main cooking pot of the pressure cooker. Fill it up with water, enough to cover all the meat. Press the START button on the pressure cooker. This will start the heating element in the machine. It’s not necessary to shut and lock the lid at this time. In about 10-minutes or so, you’ll start to see particles that you want to get rid of. It’s sort of foamy and grimy. It looks pretty gross. Use a spoon and start spooning the gunk out and discard. Turn the pressure cooker off by pressing CANCEL. Use an oven mitt and pour all the grimy water out. Rinse the beef 1-2 times with fresh water and discard the water again.

Now comes the real cooking part. The beef should be inside the main cooking pot still. Add the soy sauce, the rice wine, water, and spicy bean paste.

Chop up all the other ingredients, but leave the star anise and rock candy whole, then add everything into the pot. Give it a good stir if you like but it’s not necessary.

Shut the lid and turn it counter clockwise to lock. Make sure the pressure valve is set to “Airtight”. Program the pressure cooker to 30-minutes by pressing the SET PRESSURE COOK TIME button. Now press START. Let the machine do its thing.

At this time, you can start boiling a big pot of filtered water to cook the bok choy. Get the water to a rolling boil. Add the bok choy to the hot water and only cook them for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and use a slotted spoon to pull the bok choy from the water. Set aside. You can add the noodles to the same water and cook for 10-minutes until they are tender. Do not overcook, or they will become mush. Remove from the heat and strain the noodles.

When the pressure cooker has completed the 30-minute cooking cycle, it will beep and automatically go to Keep Warm. Release all the pressure by turning the valve to Exhaust. Unlock and open the lid.

Stir the beef mixture and do a taste test. If it’s too salty, add more water. Find all the ginger and star anise pieces and discard.

Put noodles into a serving bowl. Top it with 1-2 boy choy clusters. Then ladle the beef and soy sauce mixture onto the noodles. Garnish with a splash of sesame oil, chopped cilantro and green onions.