Filipino Beef Soup – Nilagang Baka
A Filipino Beef Soup, or Nilagang Baka, is perfect for the cold weather months ahead. Beef chuck is simmered with carrots, potatoes, green beans, cabbage, and bok choy until tender and melt in your mouth delicious. It’s healthy comfort food that you will find yourself craving all year round.
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This recipe has a soft spot in my heart as it is one of my favorites from my childhood, besides lumpia spring rolls and pancit noodles. It is so comforting and filling, with its deliciously rich hunks of beef, carrots, and potatoes swimming in a tangy and flavorful broth. I love eating this colorful stew in a bowl with some rice. It’s so satisfying for a cold winter day or when you’re feeling under the weather.
What You Will Need
Never made Nilagang Baka before? No worries, it uses easy to find ingredients! Here’s what you will need:
- Stewing beef – Beef chuck is my favorite to use, but you can use beef shank, brisket, beef round, and even beef ribs. Just don’t use steak or tenderloin, since they do not get tender when simmered.
- Fish sauce – Make sure to get a gluten free brand if you want to keep this gluten free. If you don’t need this to be specifically gluten free, I prefer the brands Rufina’s, Datu Puti, and Squid.
- Vegetables – Onions, potatoes, carrots, green beans, cabbage, and baby bok choy. Baby bok choy is optional, but it’s delicious and adds vitamins and minerals such as folate, vitamin C, vitamin E, beta-carotene, selenium, and fiber. Also optional, you can also add chopped corn on the cob if you want.
- Large pot – Any heavy bottomed pot that can hold up to 3 quarts will do. I like to use this one.
How To Make Filipino Beef Soup
Beef soup is one of those dishes that every culture around the world has. What makes a Filipino beef soup different is that it doesn’t use flour, so it’s a wonderful gluten free version. Also, instead of wine or beer, it uses fish sauce to add umami and depth of flavor.
I like to use beef chuck for my soup, as it’s an inexpensive cut of beef that gets wonderfully tender after simmering. After slicing it into large chunks, simmer it with water with cut up onions for 2 hours. Then you add fish sauce, quartered potatoes, carrots, bok choy, and green beans and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Halfway through, add cabbage.
Making Your Best Beef Broth
A good Nilagang Baka has a crisp, clear broth. To ensure it’s clean and rid of all of the frothy scum, watch it closely as your beef simmers. Continuously sweep out the scum with a spoon until it’s clear, and then lower the heat to a simmer.
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Other fun recipes to try:
Easy Mini Biscoff Ube Cheesecakes
Double Chocolate Ube Cheesecake Swirled Brownies
Better Than Bakery Ube Pandesal
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Filipino Beef Soup – Nilagang Baka
Ingredients
- 2 pounds beef chuck cut into 1" chunks
- 6 cups water
- 1 large onion quartered
- 6 Tablespoons fish sauce
- 2 large potatoes peeled and cut into 4-6 pieces each
- 2 large carrots peeled and cut into 1" pieces
- 12 green beans ends trimmed
- 1/2 head of cabbage
- 2 baby bok choy washed well and ends cut off
- 1 cup rice cooked
Instructions
- In a pot, boil beef chuck and water over medium high heat. Skim the pot with a spoon to get rid of any scum that floats to the top. When scum is gone, add onions and fish sauce.
- Lower heat, cover the pot, and simmer for 2 hours.
- Add corn, if using, and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Add potatoes and carrots and simmer for 5 minutes.
- Add green beans, cabbage, and bok choy. Simmer for 5 minutes more or until potatoes are tender. Add salt to taste and serve with rice.