Beef Kare-Kare — Peanut Stew

Name: Beef Kare-Kare — Peanut Stew
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Yield: 5
Cuisine: Filipino
Ingredients: 900 g (2 lbs) Beef chuck, cubed; 225 g (1.5 cups) Ground roasted peanuts; 1–2 tbsp Annatto powder; 2 tbsp Glutinous rice powder; 960 ml (4 cups) Beef broth; 1 bunch String beans, cut into 5 cm lengths; 1 bundle Bok choy; 1 Chinese eggplant, sliced; 1 Large yellow onion; 2 tsp Garlic, minced; 4 tbsp Cooking oil; 2–3 tbsp Fish sauce; 120 ml (0.5 cup) Water; 0.5 tsp Ground black pepper; Shrimp paste (bagoong alamang)

A thick, orange, entirely unspiced peanut stew — beef simmered until soft in ground roasted peanuts and annatto, with blanched vegetables laid alongside. It is deliberately bland on the plate, because it is eaten with a dab of salty shrimp paste at every bite.

Fuente

Receta de Vanjo Merano · 📱 Influencer · Vanjo Merano — Filipino food writer behind Panlasang Pinoy, the largest Filipino recipe site

Los nombres de cocineros y creadores aparecen únicamente como crédito de la fuente. More Recipes Please es independiente y no está afiliada, respaldada ni patrocinada por ellos.

Panlasang Pinoy (Vanjo Merano) — Vanjo Merano's published beef version — the everyday cut in place of the traditional oxtail and tripe. Kare-kare is associated with Pampanga, but its actual origin is genuinely disputed for lack of primary sources, and competing theories are honestly unresolved. Calories are omitted: the nutrition block on the source page is truncated.

Cocinero: Vanjo Merano

Watch it being made · 3 videos

Vanjo Merano Our Food Love Story Znel12's Kitchen

⏱ 105 min🍽 5 porciones🇵🇭 Filipinas

Sin glutenSin lácteos

Pasos

Heat the oil in a heavy pot over medium heat and cook the onion and garlic until the onion turns soft and translucent, about 3 minutes.
Stir in the black pepper, then the beef. Cook, turning the pieces, until they are lightly browned all over.
Add the ground peanuts and cook for 2 minutes, stirring constantly.
💡 Do not walk away here. Ground peanuts are mostly oil and they scorch in seconds on a hot pan bottom — burnt peanut is bitter and cannot be rescued.
Pour in the beef broth, cover, and simmer on low for 60 to 90 minutes, until a fork goes into the beef with no resistance.
💡 Ninety minutes is not an exaggeration for chuck. If you are using oxtail, expect closer to three hours. Beef that is 'nearly there' will feel rubbery in the finished stew.
While it simmers, blanch the vegetables separately in boiling water — string beans about 3 minutes, eggplant 2, bok choy 1 — and drop each straight into iced water. Drain and set aside.
💡 Separately is the whole point — they cook at wildly different speeds, and the ice water is what keeps the beans bright green instead of army-drab.
Mix the annatto powder and the glutinous rice powder into the 120 ml of cold water until smooth, then stir it into the pot with the fish sauce. Simmer 3 to 5 minutes until the sauce thickens and turns orange.
Spoon the stew into a wide bowl and arrange the blanched vegetables around and over it. Serve with a small dish of shrimp paste and steamed rice.
💡 The vegetables go on at the end rather than being cooked in, so the plate keeps distinct colours and textures instead of turning into one orange mass.

💡 Consejos

Kare-kare is supposed to taste under-seasoned on its own. The salt arrives at the table, on the tip of a spoon of bagoong. Salting the stew properly and then adding bagoong makes it inedibly salty.
If the sauce goes lumpy, it is because the rice powder met hot liquid dry. Blitz it smooth with a stick blender — it recovers completely.
This is a fiesta dish, not a weeknight one — it is what appears at birthdays and Christmas. Cooking the beef the day before splits the work in half.