10. [BME] Linaga baka recipe (caldo de res/beef stew)
Kicking off the BME [Best Meals Ever] recipe series: my favorite homemade Filipino meal that my mom makes. (BME can also stand for Big Mother Energy)
My mother's homemade hearty beef soup recipe
I always skip the long blurb of text whenever I search for cooking recipes. They are such a bore. Ignore all the responses from food bloggers who want to pretend these 14 paragraph intros, with a literal ad in between each block of text, are written because they think people enjoy them, or that they're in any way necessary.
No, most people searching for recipes don't read those intros. I've read a few out of curiosity, and for the most part, it's a bunch of poorly written garbage with long tangents having nothing to do with food.
Now here I am, making that exact thing.
(skip all the way down for the prep time, ingredients, & instructions)
My mom calls this caldo de res. In Tagalog, nilagang baka. We technically call this linaga baka,1 which is actually a beef (i.e., baka or vaca in spanish!) broth. This recipe is similar to cocido. Of course, there are some regional differences.
This meal has been such a childhood staple. My mother doesn't really put fruit in it, but a lot of vegetables. It takes a bit of time to make (mostly it's a lot of waiting), but it's not difficult. My mother pulled me aside one day and told me that I should really learn how to make this. I've seen her make this meal so many times, but she gets frustrated with me trying to take notes on it and not actually doing it myself...
"Ay dios ko!,2 You learn by doing, Kayla! You can't just write it down and remember it like that. You have to do it yourself." my mother would say this often. well yea, she's correct. I ask her a lot of times, how do you know the measurement/proportion/etc.?
"By feeling"
I have a good memory, but I always second-guess myself. So I had to take notes when we were preparing the soup. Here's a sample of my messy writing on sticky notes while I was preparing this recipe in written form lol.
I'll provide the detailed explanations described by my mother and translated by me.
1. "mag-wash ang carne" / [en] wash the meat
So this meat is going to be dirty and slimy. My mom told me that this is a crucial first step because we have to get rid of the greasiness.
This is the cleaning process. Briefly soak the meat in a simmering pot of water. After 10 minutes or so, take it out of the stove top and head to the sink, to rinse the griminess off of the meat.
My mother noted that sometimes people rub salt on the carne, making it more difficult for the proteins to bond excessively, which keeps the meat tender and moist when it’s cooked.
After, you put the meat back in the pot, fill it with water, and let it boil on the stove top.
2. "scoop out ng dirt & taba" / [en] scoop out all the dirt and fat
The pot's going to boil for a little while, but this weird foamy scum rises to the top. This scum is from the meat just chilling in the pot.
Cooking experts chime in, “if any of the scum is allowed to stay in the soup it will give it a most disagreeable greenish tinge,” S. Beaty-Pownall wrote in the 1899 cookbook, Soups, adding that the proper color “should be exactly like a very pale light sherry.” In 1902, The Household Cook Book confirmed that assessment. “If you want clear stock, remove the scum when it rises thickly,” wrote the authors. Soup scum should be skimmed off and discarded.
My mom instructed me to scrape that "pinkish-creamy" foam at the top of the soup. The soup's not going to taste good if that scum is staying in.
3. "add the ingredients"
My mother loves efficiency. While the meat was boiling in the pot, she cuts the vegetables. She uses tomatoes, ginger, garlic, onion, potatoes, and bok choy.
Cube all of them up and separate the veggies in bowls (you put the bowls of ingredients in at different times)
Bowl 1: tomatoes, ginger, garlic, onion
Bowl 2: stems of bok choy, potatoes
Bowl 3: leaves of bok choy, Anaheim pepper
Bowl 1 goes in right after you complete Step 2. You scoop out the foam, and then you wait for the soup to boil.
4. "add tubig" / [en] add water
The soup will go down. Replenish the soup with water every 30 minutes (give or take, I timed this via stopwatch to have a more accurate picture).
You gotta let the ingredients soak in the simmer. In my scribbly notes, you can actually find out the rate of evaporation of our stew (if we knew the original volume for the pot... I did not account for that)
To elaborate, broth is fats and particles dissolved in water. Water can evaporate from liquid to vapor, but these dissolved solids cannot. The dissolved bits are the flavor, and will only become more flavorful as the water evaporates away. This is because the amount of dissolved solids stays the same while the amount of water stays the same.
We replenished the soup with water at:
- 18 minutes (+ 2 cups)
- 48 minutes (+ 2 cups)
- 1 hr, 25 minutes (+ 1 cup)
You have to wait until the meat is tender. The meat finally became tender around 1 hour and 48 minutes.
5. "don't porget the caldo de res flabor" / [en] don't forget to add the beef bouillon flavoring (ok my mom doesn't have a really thick accent anymore... but the filipino accent is amazing and humorous)
Knorr® Caldo granulado con sabor a carne is so tasty in soups and broths. Don't forget this essential step.
6. "bok choy and ka-on" / [en] add the bok choy and eat
The leaves of the bok choy and the pepper should be the last to be added to the soup. Serve this with rice (you're in a Filipino household after all).
Linaga baka
Prep time: 2 hours, 30 minutes
Serving size: 4+ people
Ingredients
Protein:
- ~2.25 lbs/1 kg of "mixto de res" (mixed beef sirloin chunks/shanks)
Vegetables:
2 chopped tomatoes
1.5 tablespoon peeled and cut ginger root (~1-inch nub)
4 cloves of garlic
4 cubed potatoes
1 yellow onion (OR) a cut bulb of a leek
2 cups of bok choy
1 anaheim pepper
Flavoring:
- 1.5 tablespoon of "Knorr® Caldo granulado con sabor a carne" (Beef Flavor Bouillon (container) (OR) 2 cubes of "Knorr® caldo con sabor de res" (in the box)
Clean the meat (~10 min)
Scoop out the dirt and foam before introducing the vegetables (~15 minutes)
After clean-up and after boiling- add the tomato, ginger, garlic, and onion
Keep adding water to the soup until the meat is tender (~1-1.5 hours)
Once meat is tender, add Knorr® Caldo granulado con sabor a carne, potatoes, and the stems of the bok choy
When potatoes are soft, add the leaves of the bok choy and the anaheim pepper
Serve with rice, share, enjoy
~ the violent tendency in your life that you’re desperately trying to avoid and suppress,
<3 K