Bò Lúc Lắc

Name: Bò Lúc Lắc
Total time: 40 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Vietnamese
Ingredients: 600 g Beef sirloin or fillet, cut into 3 cm cubes; 2 tbsp Oyster sauce; 1 tbsp Soy sauce; 1 tbsp Fish sauce; 1 tbsp Sugar; 6 Garlic cloves, chopped; 2 tsp Black pepper, coarsely cracked; 1 Red onion, cut into wedges; 2 tbsp Butter or oil; 150 g Watercress, or lettuce and tomato; 2 Limes; 2 tsp Salt; 600 g Rice or chips, to serve

Shaking beef — cubes seared in a pan so hot the cook shakes it rather than stirs, tipped over watercress and eaten with a lime, salt and pepper dip mixed at the table.

Source

Recette de Southern Vietnamese home kitchens · 🏺 Traditionnel · Saigon and Mekong Delta home cooking — sweeter, coconut-led, served with herbs by the armful

Vietnam · shaking beef — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms shaking beef, bo luc lac, as a Vietnamese dish of beef cut into small cubes and marinated with fish sauce, soy sauce and oyster sauce. The pan-heat test, the two-batch rule, the shake timings and the mix-the-dip-late note are this book's own.

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Alissa Nguyen Vicky Pham Pailin's Kitchen

⏱ 40 min🍽 4 portions🔥 400 kcal🇻🇳 Vietnam

Sans produits laitiers

Étapes

Marinate the beef in the oyster sauce, soy, fish sauce, sugar, garlic and half the pepper for 20 minutes.
Get a heavy pan properly hot — a drop of water should vanish instantly — then add the butter and half the beef in one layer.
💡 Half at a time, and leave it alone for the first 60 seconds. Beef added all at once drops the pan's heat and starts stewing in its marinade.
Now shake the pan hard every 20 seconds for 2 minutes, so the cubes tumble and brown on every face.
💡 Shaking, not stirring — that is where the name comes from. A spatula pushes the cubes flat against the pan; shaking turns them.
Throw in the onion wedges for the last 30 seconds — hot through, still crunchy. Repeat with the second batch.
Mix the salt and remaining pepper on a saucer and squeeze a lime over it — that is the dip.
Tip the beef over the watercress so the juices dress it, and serve with rice.

💡 Astuces

The lime-salt-pepper dip is mixed at the table for a reason: lime juice goes dull within minutes of meeting salt, and the point of it is the sting.
Sirloin, not stewing beef. Two minutes in a pan will not tenderise anything, so this dish is only as good as the cut you started with.