Mandarin Beef Stew

Recipe from Lawrence C.C. Chu



Here's home-style Chinese cooking at its best. It's one of the more popular items served at Chef Chu's: Some customers ask for it over boiled noodles or rice; others prefer it just by itself.

Yields:

8-10 servings

Time Required:

Ingredients:

In a cheesecloth bag, put:


Seasonings

Preparation:

To par-boil, place beef in enough boiling water to cover and cook for 3 mins. Remove to colander, and rinse under cold water.

In a 6-quart (5.5 L) heavy stockpot (or earthenware pot), drop in ginger, onion, cheesecloth bag, and beef; set aside.

To stir-fry, heat wok (or wide frying pan) over high heat for 1 min. until hot. Add oil, and swirl pan to coat sides. When oil is hot, add chilli peppers, and cook until brown. Add garlic, and brown slightly. Stir in remaining SEASONINGS, and bring to a boil. Pour into stockpot, and add just enough water to cover.

To stew, bring to a boil, cover, and reduce heat to medium. Cook for 45 mins., stirring occasionally. Remove from heat, and discard cheesecloth bag, ginger, and onion. Skim off any fat, and garnish with Chinese parsley (cilantro), to serve.

Author's Notes

I sometimes add chunks of bamboo shoots, tomato wedges, and a pinch of curry powder. Then, I thicken with cornstarch paste3, and serve over hot boiled rice. It can also be served over boiled noodles. In either case, watch out for the chilli peppers: They're hot!

Most Chinese prefer meat with some gristle remaining. A little gristle helps retain the shape of the meat during a long stewing time.


1 Quarts, pints, cups, tablespoons, teaspoons, and fl. oz. are as defined in US Customary Units, not to be confused with differing British imperial, "legal", "coffee", Commonwealth of Nations, Canadian, Latin American, Japanese, Russian, or Dutch definitions — further proof that everyone needs the metric system.

2 Sichuan peppercorns, hua jiao; 花椒, also called wild peppercorns, have a subtle, delicate smell and mildly hot taste. They're spicier than black peppercorns. It's the fruit husk of aromatic trees native to Sichuan Province on the upper Yangtze River, harvested from any of several species in genus Zanthoxylum (the "prickly ashes"), related to citrus and unrelated to anything else called "pepper".

3 Tangerines: Here in the 2020s, you'll seldom (any longer) find any citrus labelled "tangerine" in stores, but mandarins are basically the same thing, so use those. "Tangerine" was and remains a marketing name / trademark for a close mandarin hybrid, originally imported from Tangier, Morocco, then grown in local orange groves, and popularised worldwide by one Major Atway of Florida and successors. The name was ubiquitous in Chef Chu's day, but no longer.

4 Cornstarch paste is a thin paste made from equal parts of cold water and corn starch. It is essential in many Chinese dishes (but be careful not to over-thicken). Stir just before using. Store covered in the refrigerator for 1 or 2 days.

"Corn starch" is powdered starch processed from the New World grain maize (from Spanish, orig. from Nahuatl), which grain the USA/Canada call "corn", unlike the rest of the English-speaking world, which reserves "corn" to mean cereal grains generically. This starch product, needed here in its customary role as a thickening agent, is called "corn starch" in the US/Canada, but "cornflour" in the UK and most other anglophone lands — not to be confused with whole maize grain: That product — not a thickening agent — is called "polenta", "corn meal", or "corn flour" in the US/Canada, depending on how finely milled, and called "maize flour" in the UK and most other places. Australians should beware that their "cornflour" is starch extracted from wheat kernel, sometimes more-helpfully labelled as "wheaten cornflour". As if that weren't confusing enough, the maize-based thickener may be labelled (in Australia) either as "corn flour" or as "corn starch", so beware. Further, the maize flour product, there, is labelled as "cornmeal".

Note that whole-maize grain is traditionally, in Meso-American cultures of origin, wisely soaked in alkaline solution ("nixtamalised") to increase bioavailability and thereby prevent niacin deficiency (pellagra), among other important benefits, yielding "masa" (lit. dough) aka "masa de maíz" (lit. maize dough), also available in dried & ground form as "masa harina" (lit. dough flour) aka "harina de maíz" (lit. maize flour), and in its unground form, hominy. As further complication, Americans distinguish "corn flour", meaning prepared from maize endosperm only, from "maize flour" for use of whole maize — the former, neutral-flavoured; the latter, much more nutritious.

Origin of the naming mess: Originally, North America shared with Mother England the language's original meaning of "corn" to mean cereal grains generically (from Old English "corn" meaning single seed of any cereal plant, orig. from Proto-Germanic "kurnam" meaning small seed). The colonists got the gift of maize from native peoples, therefore at first calling it "Indian corn". Later, in the USA and Canada, "Indian corn" got worn down to just "corn", while the original meaning of "corn" was lost, locally. "Maize" is thus now the least-ambiguous term in international contexts, though many Americans either don't know that word or reserve it for variants from Latin-American (and Spanish) cooking.

Taken from: Lawrence C.C. Chu's classic cookbook Chef Chu's Distinctive Cuisine Of China, p. 141. published 1980 by Harper and Row, which can be checked out in scanned format at Internet Archive. Thank you! (Chu's the chef / restaurateur of beloved local restaurant Chef Chu's, in Los Altos, California.)

Collected and re-published at http://linuxmafia.com/~rick/recipes/mandarin-beef-stew.html by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> on xxx. xx, 2026. Individual recipes are free from copyright. Share and enjoy!

(If I have any copyright title in my own very minor contributions to this page — not my intention — they were created in 2026 by Rick Moen <rick@linuxmafia.com> and licensed for use under CC0. I have thereby waived all copyright, compilation copyright, and related or neighbouring rights to this work. This work is published from: United States of America.)