I was pretty surprised to find this at T&T market earlier in the year. The full translation of the name comes out at Beef Stew with Potatoes and Egg Drop Soup. Another name for it is 柱侯蘿蔔牛筋腩 or Ow Lam Bow in Cantonese. This savoury, comfort food is a favourite of mine and is popular in Hong Kong. I can tell you right now the stew smelled right and tasted good with the right flavour profile. The only thing about it that was a little odd was that is substituted potatoes for the daikon radish (it is better with daikon radish in my opinion).
The meal's package was quite large as it was a large oblong, black plastic bowl, something that was needed to use with the flameless ration heater that was included. The outer packaging was covered in clear plastic wrap with a printed cardboard sleeve underneath showing all of the product picture, name, and details.
There are many different recipes for this dish, but common ingredients for it include: beef brisket, daikon radish, garlic, green onions, soy sauce, dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine (Chinese rice wine) or dry sherry, brown sugar, Chinese five-spice powder, and star anise. It is a slow cooked stew to make the beef brisket soft and tender and it often has beef tendon too. I have included links to three recipes below.
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Side view of the package.
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Bottom of the cardboard sleeve with ingredients and preparation directions.
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The preparation directions up close. They were a little vague for how much water to add to things, something that is important for flameless ration heaters.
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The big black tub with its lid. The hole in the middle will let steam out.
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There were a pile of packets inside along with a meal tray.
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This is a bag of water for rehydrating the dehydrated rice. It even says I am a bag of water. I actually didn't use it and manually measured the amount of fresh water to rehydrate the rice. It was odd they gave this one packet of water, but nothing for the soup or the heater.
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Freeze-dried egg drop soup.
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The flameless ration heater element. Usually iron and magnesium that reacts with water to create heat and steam.
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Bag of dehydrated white rice.
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A retort pouch of beef stew sauce, beef, and veggies.
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The soup, rice, and stew laid out on the serving tray.
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The heating element at the bottom of the tub. I have added water to the rice and the soup.
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I poured water on the heater to just cover it and then placed the tray on top. The heating reaction will kick off in a few moments. These are like MRE heaters that get very hot.
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I let the heater run on a wooden surface I wasn't worried about (DON'T use ration heaters on a nice wood table - they get hot!). Also use it in a well ventilated space. The tub will get hot so be careful holding it and steam can leak through the lid edges.
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You let it run for 10 to 15 minutes - the heating reaction slows. This heats the water in the the food and slowly rehydrates the rice.
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The meal prepares itself after reheating. I didn't smell much off the soup, but the stew smelled like anise, soy, rice wine, etc. It smelled like Cantonese beef stew. The rice came out soft with a few chewier, but not crunchy, grains. This kind of rice is rarely fluffy (some of the Japanese rice cups are pretty good though). I mixed the stew into the rice and dug in. It tasted like the savoury, beefy stew I was expecting. It wasn't spectacular, but it was pretty good for something that was pre-packaged. There were little bits of soy protein to simulate beef and the potatoes were soft, but not mushy. It was too bad it wasn't daikon, but I'm not sure how well daikon would have held up under these same packaging methods. The egg drop soup was mild and salty - less salty if you add more water. Overall, this was a really interesting shelf-stable packaged meal. It felt overpackaged to me due to all of the plastic components, but many of these instant stews / soups in tubs from China are like this. I don't buy many of these for this same reason, but it was something I wanted to try.
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Closeup of the rice and potatoes.
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