[intro music] Hey guys, Jeremy here from School of Wok, Covent Garden. This week another Wok
Wednesday and it's a Hong Kong special: Beef Brisket Noodle Soup. So this is one of the
Hong Kong classics: Beef Brisket Noodle Soup. Actually one of my uncles used to fly over
to Hong Kong just for a weekend just for a midnight beef brisket noodle soup. He'd call
my dad up and say, "Hey, I'm hungry! Shall we go eat?" and then he'd leave about two
days later. Anyway, so that's how good beef brisket noodle soup can be. We're gonna start
with your ginger and spring onion and a little bit of garlic, and that's just to sort of
flavour the soup base. We've got some chicken stock that's been boiling away, or simmering
away for a good few hours yesterday. Slices of ginger is all we really need. Spring onion,
a fair amount. And again, just sort of rough chunks, 'cause we're gonna sieve this out
later on. Garlic. Just a gentle bash! And then just straight in there pretty much whole.
Your spring onion just to garnish at the end; just rings. We've got your beef brisket...
Now in Hong Kong, we have your brisket, but also like, tendon that we eat. Beef tendon.
You wanna boil that for hours and hours and hours if you can, because it will really soften
up. We want sort of, chunks of your beef tendon. You can see, it's pretty chewy. The longer
you boil this the better, which is why beef brisket noodle soup like this, is often eaten
sort of, after a night out, at like, 3 o'clock in the morning if you are a party animal like
me... [loud music] Well, to be honest, I'm getting quite old. So, your tendon is pretty
much there. Your brisket, you want good large dices of brisket. And again, keep the fat
on - that marbling is really great for flavour. Nice sized chunks. And you know you've got
good brisket if the marblings there, but it's not too fatty. Right, so I've got my tendon,
I've got my brisket, I've got my base flavour and my spices to go with that. The first thing
I'm gonna do actually, is I'm gonna blanche my beef tendon because of course, there's
a lot of fat and sinew in there: that's gonna create a lot of scum, so I'd rather get as
much as that scum out as possible first before I put it into the stock. Water's boiling:
this is just for the tendon, as I say, just to bring out that sort of excess fat or solid
impurities, I guess. You can see the scum coming off the fat straight away. There's
no going around that, but this is essentially almost a cleaning process before it goes into
your clear soup. In Hong Kong tradition, and in our Hong Kong food, there's a lot of offal...
It's almost like a no waste policy. That no waste policy isn't really to do with sustainability
as such, it's more about, it just pains us to see food go to waste. Just dip it in a
little bit of clean, cool, cold water and then we can start cooking your beef brisket.
Beef brisket, tendons, all definitely slow cook. The longer you cook this, the better.
At a bare minimum, 2 hours, but really it needs to go for 4 or 5 hours if you have that
time. High heat, just to bring the heat up and then onto medium heat. I'm gonna start
to flavour the base of the pan before I pour the stock in. A small amount of oil, not too
much. Main base of five spice, so star anise, the start of five spice. Cinnamon stick, or
cassia bark, just gonna crack that in half. Some bay leaves, and then not too many, just
a couple of cloves. And we're gonna start to fry these spices. Immediately because of
that oil, and the heat, you'll smell the spices and the aroma of those spices coming out.
Next up, garlic, ginger, spring onion: your main base of Chinese cuisine. I do want the
ginger and garlic to go almost a little bit golden brown if I can. And we're actually
gonna start to add the beef, your sauces, and caramelise the sauces around the beef
first before you add your chicken stock. That'll really give a serious amount of flavour to
the beef itself. Once you've got that browning of ginger, your spring onion can go in. Give
that a good stir. And again, just allow that spring onion to sear nicely because it's gonna
bring out the essence of flavour and add to the stock. My briskets going in. Just push
that brisket down into the oil. And then we're gonna start to add your sauces. Oyster sauce,
you're probably looking at about 1 to 2 tablespoons of oyster sauce: I'm going for blobs here.
Right, we want that to sort of boil up and caramelise nicely before we add our stock.
We've got a bit of light soy sauce. Again, about a tablespoon of light soy. I'm gonna
bring the heat up now to a higher heat so it comes to a vigorous boil. So you wanna
add your tendon to your pan at this point whilst you're caramelising that sauce around
the meat. I've got my chicken stock here. It's cold chicken stock so we can keep this
stock nice and clear. You can see now, more scum coming off, and that's from the oil and
the meat that's gone in - so the beef brisket. So just gonna take that scum out. That's what
that bowl of cold water's really useful for. And I advise to do this every sort of, 15-20
minutes, and then you'll end up with a really nice, clear, clean stock. So once all your
stock's in, literally, bring it to a boil and then bring it down to a simmer. Let it
simmer for as long as you can cope for. As long as you've got. I just need a pinch of
salt, but I'll do that later, just for seasoning. Whilst your stock's boiling away, you can
soak your noodles. These are fine egg noodles. You can use whatever noodles you want really.
Actually in a classic Chinese cafe, you have the option of what noodles you want, so: flat
rice noodles, egg noodles, flat egg noodles... there's so many different types. You can even
have a curried version of this beef brisket noodle soup. I have that recipe in my book
Hong Kong Diner, just because I like it. It'll probably take about 4-5 minutes to soak these
egg noodles. Once they've lost their packet shape, then we're gonna strain it, and dry
it on a clean tea towel. So you don't wanna over cook your noodles at this point, or any
point really. So you wanna strain those. The best thing to do is actually to dry it on
a clean tea towel. But of course you've got 4-5 hours for this, so they'll be nice and
dry for later and they'll keep their bite and be nice and separate. [music] Right so
my soup has had about 4 or 5 hours, and the beef I've tried one piece. It's really nice
and soft. The tendons have softened up well as well. So we just need to season this with
a good bit of salt. Have a little taste. All that ginger and spice. Ohhh! Oh, I feel like
I'm in the streets of Hong Kong, and I haven't even finished the dish yet. So we're gonna
fish out all the bits just to give myself a bit of space. Now we're just gonna keep
this nice and simple, we've got your egg noodles. 30 seconds. Serve them up. Then a good selection
of your meat and tendon. Start to pile these up. Your stock, which is really nice and hot,
packed full of savoury flavour. Spring onion. Really keep it as simple as your beef and
noodles. I've got some flash fried morning glory for the side. Tuck into the noodles.
The proper Chinese way is to slurp when you drink your soup. Let's try the tendon. Mmm.
Got a good chew to it. Should be soft but still a bit chewy. The soup has got all that
flavour from the base. Your spices, your star anise, your cinnamon. Really takes me back
to Hong Kong. If you like this recipe, and you wanna learn more, or you just want a taste
of Hong Kong or anywhere in Asia, subscribe to our channel. [outro music]