Name: Kachin Pounded Beef with Herbs
Yield: Serves 4
Cuisine: Myanmar (Burma)
Ingredients: 1½ teaspoons salt; 1 scant tablespoon peanut oil or vegetable oil; 1 tablespoon chopped ginger; ½ cup loosely packed Vietnamese coriander, coarsely torn or chopped, or substitute coriander leaves; 2 teaspoons chopped garlic; 1 teaspoon lightly toasted Sichuan peppercorns; 2 dried red chiles, stemmed; 1 teaspoon ground Sichuan pepper; About 1 cup water; 1 to 1¼ pounds stewing beef or boneless beef shoulder, trimmed of fat and cut into approximately 1-inch cubes

Preparation info

Serves
4

Difficulty
Easy

Appears in

Burma

By Naomi Duguid

Published 2012

About

This is one of the most unusual and delicious dishes I have ever come across. The beef is first cooked in a little water, then briefly fried to firm it up, and finally is lightly pounded to blend the herbed flavor paste into it. It sounds complicated, but it’s easy. The flavor paste includes Sichuan peppercorns, a reminder that China and Kachin State share a long border, and that there’s been trade across it for centuries. In Myitkyina, people told me that they refer to Sichuan pepper as Ka