Cantonese Beef Stew is a dish that always popped in and out of my childhood. Sometimes it would be bubbling away in a clay pot at a Chinatown restaurant, and sometimes it was scooped out of a big pot at home. The tender, gelatinous pieces of beef and melt-in-your-mouth chunks of radish in a thin gravy, served over rice? Total comfort food. This Instant Pot Braised Beef with Radish is my shortcut pressure cooker version, with a few tweaks and improvements from the original Cantonese braised beef recipe we posted back in the early days of the blog.
Cantonese Comfort Food
My dad’s family is Cantonese, and my mom’s side of the family is from Shanghai. While my sister and I grew up eating dishes from both cuisines, my mom once asked us…if we had to choose, which would we rather have? A table filled with Shanghainese classics like braised pork belly, soup dumplings (xiao long bao), drunken chicken, and scallion oil noodles? Or a table of Cantonese classics like Salt and Pepper Pork Chops, steamed whole fish, and this braised beef with radish?
While I have a special place in my heart reserved for xiao long bao, and my sister is obsessed with scallion oil noodles, we both sheepishly turned to each other and said, back-against-the-wall, we’d choose the Cantonese table.
There’s just something particularly homey and comforting about Cantonese food, especially saucy things over rice, like this Instant Pot Braised Beef with Radish. There’s just nothing better.
Rough Flank: A Tough Cut of Meat!
Now that I’m officially an Instant Pot convert, I decided to create a pressure cooker Cantonese braised beef with radish recipe. Like my Instant Pot Curry Beef recipe, this recipe uses a cut of beef called rough flank (niu nan in Mandarin, or ngau lam in Cantonese).
It’s a pretty tough cut of meat, full of tendony, sinewy, and gristly bits that when cooked for hours, all work together to produce a delicious texture. We cut them into pretty big, 2 1/2 inch chunks, as you can see below, because they’ll shrink when cooked.
The Instant Pot helps tenderize that tough cut of meat in much less time, which is key when you’re looking for a comfort food dinner and may not have 4-6 hours to make it.
Cantonese Instant Pot Braised Beef with Radish: The Recipe
Fill your wok with cold water, and add the beef. Place over high heat, bring to a boil, and cook the beef for 1 minute to remove any impurities (see all that foam and scum in the photo below? That’s the stuff you don’t want in your stew!)
Use a slotted spoon to remove the beef to a colander, and rinse. Set aside.
Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in your Instant Pot on the saute setting. Add the fresh ginger slices, and cook for 2-3 minutes, until fragrant and slightly crisped at the edges.
Add the blanched beef, Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, 3 star anise, 5 cloves, 3 bay leaves, and 1 tablespoon sugar.
Seal the Instant Pot, make sure the valve is set to “sealing,” and turn on the meat/stew for 45 minutes. The float valve on the top of the Instant Pot will raise when under pressure.
Once finished, allow the Instant Pot to release pressure naturally. Once the Instant Pot is safe to open (pressure is fully released when the float valve has dropped back into the lid), open it up. Here’s what the stew will look like at this stage:
Next, add the radish chunks.
Stir to combine with the beef.
Replace the lid, seal the Instant Pot, move the valve back to the sealing position, and put it back on manual high pressure for 10 minutes. Once done, allow the pressure to release again using Quick Pressure Release this time (be careful moving the valve, as the steam released will be very hot. Use an oven mitt!).
Open the pot when safe. Turn on the saute setting and bring the stew to a simmer. Mix together chicken stock or water and cornstarch into a slurry and stir into the stew to thicken. Simmer for 2 minutes, season with salt to taste, and stir in the scallions.
Serve your Instant Pot braised beef with rice!
Cantonese Instant Pot Braised Beef with Radish
Ingredients
- 3 to 3 ½ lbs beef rough flank (1.5 kg, cut into 2 1/2-inch pieces)
- 2 tablespoons vegetable oil (30 ml)
- 7 slices ginger
- 1 cup Shaoxing wine (240 ml)
- 3 tablespoons light soy sauce (45 ml)
- 1 tablespoon dark soy sauce (15 ml)
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce (15 ml)
- 3 pieces star anise
- 5 cloves
- 3 bay leaves
- 1 tablespoon sugar (12g)
- 2 pounds daikon radish (1 kg, peeled and cut into 1-½ inch pieces)
- ¼ cup chicken stock or water (mixed with 2 teaspoons cornstarch)
- Salt (to taste)
- 2 scallions (cut on a diagonal into 1-inch pieces)
Instructions
- Fill your wok with cold water, and add the beef. Place over high heat, bring to a boil, and cook the beef for 1 minute to remove any impurities. Use a slotted spoon to remove the beef to a colander, and rinse. Set aside.
- Heat 2 tablespoons vegetable oil in your Instant Pot on the saute setting. Add the ginger slices, and cook for 2-3 minutes, until fragrant and slightly crisped at the edges.
- Add the blanched beef, Shaoxing wine, light soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, 3 star anise, 5 cloves, 3 bay leaves, and 1 tablespoon sugar.
- Seal the Instant Pot, make sure the valve is set to “sealing,” and turn on the meat/stew for 45 minutes. The float valve on the top of the Instant Pot will raise when under pressure.
- Once finished, allow the Instant Pot to release pressure naturally. Once the Instant Pot is safe to open (pressure is fully released when the float valve has dropped back into the lid), open it and add the radish chunks. Stir to combine with the beef.
- Replace the lid, seal the Instant Pot, move the valve back to the sealing position, and put it back on manual high pressure for 10 minutes. Once done, allow the pressure to release again using Quick Pressure Release this time (be careful moving the valve, as the steam released will be very hot. Use an oven mitt!).
- Open the pot when safe. Turn on the Saute setting and bring the stew to a simmer. Mix together chicken stock or water and cornstarch into a slurry and stir into the stew to thicken. Simmer for 2 minutes, season with salt to taste, and stir in the scallions.
- Serve with rice!
nutrition facts
Hi, can you clarify what this flank is? Is it the beef flank you suggest in “how to prep beef for stir fry”? Or is it a whole different type of cut? I’m looking up 牛腩 and many say it’s flank, which is confusing. I don’t think normal flank from Trader Joe’s would work for this, right?
It’s called rough flank, which is a cut you can only find in Asian markets. It’s has quite a lot of connective tissue! Flank steak is totally different, and wouldn’t really work here. I would grab a well-marbled piece of beef chuck as a substitute!
This is the 1st recipe from woksoflife that I’m quite disappointed in. I have gone to trust woksoflife so much that I don’t really compare recipes to other sources anymore, but that was a mistake for this recipes.
After making this there was a few things I would like to add to this recipe.
1. The cooking liquids will not be enough to cook all your daikon radishes. There is a good chance there will be radishes that doesn’t get cooked in the liquid, so I had to take out the beef and pressure cook the radish by itself again. A solution would be to add a bit more stock or water then reduce the liquid at the end if needed.
2. The Daikon is not chinese radish so it can be bitter, which was what happened to me. Other sources says to blanch the daikon to remove the bitter taste.
3. This recipe doesn’t really taste like what you are expecting from the restaurant as it’s missing the chu hou paste that makes this dish.
4. I used beef stew meat and I reduces the time to 35mins as suggested in the comments. However after pressure cooking the 2nd time with the radish, the meat Shredded apart. So I had Shredded meat with daikon.
Apologies you didn’t enjoy this recipe, Henry! Not sure what could have gone wrong as I have made this recipe several times, and others have enjoyed it as well. I will have to test it again on my own to investigate.
Hi henry, I wanted to comment on your point about the daikon. During this time of the year, cold weather should be producing sweeter daikon radishes. Be sure to pick firm, smooth radishes. This holds true for all varieties, including green daikon. You may have been using an older and tougher daikon, which explains why it took longer to cook. Hope that helps!
Hi ! If I use chuck beef or short ribs , would I still have to blanch the meat for this Braised beef stew with Daikon recipe ? Thank you
Yes, that’s generally a good idea, Sally! Alternatively, you could brown the meat first.
How would you cook it without instant pot? Like a regular claypot stew.
Here’s a non-Instant Pot version! https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-braised-beef-turnips/
I made this with chuck beef as I couldn’t source rough flank. It was a delicious recipe. I was really skeptical about the amount of Shaoxing wine that I had to add but it tasted perfect. The flavours are similar to what my parents used to make! I would make this again.
Yayyy! So happy to hear that, and thank you for trusting our recipes :-)
Thank you so much, Becky! Glad you enjoyed it!
I’d like to make this recipe properly. Unfortunately, I can’t find “rough flank” or “outside flank” anywhere around where I live. (I used to be able to get this cut from Chinese grocery stores, but have since moved to an area with few Asian markets. So sad.) I tried using brisket and it didn’t turn out well. You suggested using well marbled chuck as a substitute for rough flank. Do you think meaty short ribs work for this? Thanks!
Short ribs could work, Jennifer, as they are quite fatty!
Step 3, you’ll need to add about 250ml of stock – I followed the instructions and the instapot ran out of liquid to pressurise. This resulted in burnt meat. I wish I never saw this recipe, wasted my money.
Hi Tony, I think what may have happened here is that the valve was not all the way set to “sealing,” which may have caused liquid to evaporate off during cooking. Because the 1 cup Shaoxing wine and other ingredients are more than enough to pressure-cook the meat for 45 minutes. A lot of liquid is released from the beef (and later the daikon) as well!
Do you need to add water to cook the beef on step 3/4? Very little liquid at that point before turning on the instapot
No need, Kenneth! If you add too much liquid, you’ll end up with a soup at the end!
Really good. It was a long process because I included beef tendon. I made some changes and used carrots and potatoes because my family doesn’t care for daikon. It was wonderful and nostalgic.
That is wonderful, Selina :-)
So happy to hear that, Selina!
This did not turn out well! It overwhelmingly tatted of salt, the slides are mostly lost. But the worst thing was the color: grey and icky. I would prefer to brown the meat to make a darker color rather than blanch it. And the daikon was not infused well with flavor. Well take me a while to figure out how to rescue this recipe, but I think ditching the instant pot might be a good place to start.
Hi Ann, here is our original recipe cooked on stove :-)
Hi Ann, apologies that you didn’t like this recipe. Not sure what went wrong, as so many people have tried it and loved it. It might be that it’s just not a dish that you enjoy. That said, if you’d like to make it on the stovetop, you can check out my mom’s version: https://thewoksoflife.com/chinese-braised-beef-turnips/
Have you tried adding more dark soy sauce? And are you sure you used dark soy sauce (and not light soy sauce by accident) to darken your meat? Blanching your meat is a really important part of making asian stew meat, so I personally would really recommend sticking to blanching even if you switch out the IP.