As read about in CME Chapter 1

(红烧牛肉面)

INGREDIENTS:

Steps:

1. Take all of your aromatics and bundle them into a cheese cloth and tie it shut with food grade string.
2. After you cut your meat, make sure to wash off the excess blood before putting it into your soup pot with the water and ginger slices.
3. Bring your beef water mixture to a boil, occasionally skimming off the foam created by the beef from the top. Discard the foam, do not keep it.
4. After boiling for 15 minutes, take out the beef pieces and strain the broth through a mesh strainer. (If this method is too complicated for you, you can always buy beef stock or beef bone broth from the grocery store, and while heating it up, add the ginger.)
5. Keep the beef stock off to the side, on a low simmer.
6. In another soup pot, heat your oil and add the sugar, scallion whites and garlic cloves. Cook slightly just to sear the garlic to bring out the flavor.
7. Add your beef to the scallion mixture, stir well and cook for 5 minutes on medium high heat.
8. To your beef, add the wine and soy sauce to deglaze the bottom of the pan. Make sure every piece of beef is evenly coated in the sauce.
9. Pour your beef broth, ginger and the cheesecloth of aromatics to the beef mixture.
10. Bring the soup to a boil, stir several times then reduce the heat to a medium to let it simmer for 2 hours.
11. Cook your noodles according the the package. (Udon noodles are 10 minutes at boiling. I usually take my noodles out and then quickly cool them down in an ice/water mixture to stop them from over cooking.)
12. Quickly blanch your greens in boiling water before adding to your bowls.
13. In your bowls, add your noodles, greens and then ladle your hot beef soup over your noodles.

Notes:

There are other variations of this dish.

You can cut a daikon radish into small pieces and cook them in your beef soup to add another type of texture to your dish. It adds a little crunch to the soup. You can make this soup spicy or relatively mild depending on your preferences.

If you absolutely cannot afford the aromatics in the cheesecloth, the next best option you can do is to add a five spice seasoning to the beef broth.