Kare Kare Beef in IP

I first tasted Kare Kare Beef when the Filipino food truck Be More Pacific used to frequent my workplace. After they stopped carrying it in their food truck, I was determined to have some ALL.FOR.MYSELF. One beautiful sunny day, my friend B and I got together to cook this. B has a new Instant Pot, and this was also a good opportunity to demo the device to her.

The recipe has plenty of fresh veggies- Chinese Eggplant, Bok Choy and Long Beans. I had to sub my long beans with green beans because my long beans mildewed overnight. Gah!

For the beef, a generous amount of ground peanuts goes into the cooker.

The dish has a unique flavor profile and bright color owing to the annato, seen here mixed with water and rice flour to form a paste.

The veggies truly complement the flavor of the beef.

I blanch them in beef broth instead of plain water so that they have a little flavor themselves.

There’s the meal, served with shrimp paste (in the jar) and hot tea.

I plated mine with some pink matta rice.

The original recipe is here: Beef Kare Kare

I adapted it for the Instant Pot. Make the following changes if cooking in an electric pressure cooker:

Changes to Ingredients:

1. Reduce glutinous rice flour from 2 tbsp to 1/2 tbp. The reason is that you don’t have as much liquid when modifying the recipe for IP, and don’t need as much flour to thicken it. FYI, I used sweet rice flour since I didn’t have glutinous. Regular rice flour will do too.
2. Reduce beef broth from 4 cups to 1.5 cups. There is minimal evaporative loss in the IP, so any more liquid will make your dish too watery.

Changes to Method:

1. In Step 4, instead of adding broth to the pan, add the contents of the pan (onions, garlic, beef, peanuts) to the Instant Pot insert. Deglaze the pan with 1/2 cup beef broth. Add that, and the remaining 1 cup beef broth to the IP. Cook under high pressure for 60 minutes. Do a 5 minute release.
2. In step 5, use beef broth to blanch the veggies. Blanch the eggplant for 7 minutes. Bok  Choy for 5 (since the stems take a while to soften).
3. For step 6: When the IP is done pressure cooking, turn it off, open it, and set it on the “Saute Less/Low” setting. Add the annato-water-flour mix and simmer for 5 minutes. Your beef is ready!

I love eating this with the salty shrimp paste “bagoong alamang”. If you are in Austin, Filipino Asian Mart on Slaughter Lane carries bagoong alamang.