Taiwanese Beef Noodle Soup

Cut the shank into large 5 cm chunks. Cover with cold water in a pot with the bones, bring to a boil, and skim off the grey foam for 3 minutes. Drain everything and rinse the meat under the tap.

💡 This blanching step is what separates a clear-tasting broth from a muddy one. Do not skip it and do not keep that first water.

Wipe out the pot, warm 3 tbsp oil and fry the ginger, garlic, scallions and onion for 2 minutes. Push them aside, add the doubanjiang, and fry it against the base of the pot for a full minute until the oil runs red.

💡 Frying the doubanjiang is not optional. Raw, it tastes of salt and sharp bean; fried, it turns fragrant and red and becomes the whole colour of the soup.

Add the tomatoes and stir until they slump. Pour in the wine, then return the beef and bones, add the soy, rock sugar, spice bag, dried chillies and water.

Bring to a boil, then hold it at the barest simmer — a bubble every second or two — for 2.5 to 3 hours, until a chopstick slides into the beef with no resistance.

💡 A hard boil shreds the meat and clouds the broth. If the surface is churning, your heat is too high.

Lift out the beef and let it rest, fish out the spice bag and aromatics, and taste the broth. It should be salty, faintly sweet and deeply savoury — adjust with soy or a little more rock sugar.

Rinse and squeeze the suan cai, then dry-fry it in a hot pan for 2 minutes until it smells sour-toasty. Blanch the bok choy. Boil the noodles in a separate pot of plain water.

💡 Never cook the noodles in the broth. Their starch will thicken it and dull three hours of work.

Slice the beef thickly. Coil noodles into deep bowls, ladle over the hot broth, lay the beef on top, then add bok choy, a pinch of suan cai and a scatter of scallion and coriander.