Home-style ── Yoshoku (Japanese Western-style dishes)
Biifu Shichuu
Beef stew — beef and root vegetables simmered in a demi-glace-style sauce
Beef and root vegetables simmered in a demi-glace-style sauce. Introduced as a high-end dish at Tokyo yoshoku restaurants in the Meiji era, it's said to have settled onto home tables as packaged roux spread.
- Meat
What it's made of
In a thick, reduced brown sauce sit beef and root vegetables cooked so soft they yield to chopsticks. Long simmering pulls the meat's fibers apart, while carrot and onion soak up the sauce's savor and hold their shape without falling apart. The sauce is built rich enough to go with either bread or rice, and it's often served as a hotel restaurant's signature dish.
How it's made
The usual method is to simmer a chunk of beef for a long time with aromatic vegetables in red wine or a demi-glace-style sauce. The long cooking time softens the meat and gives the sauce its thickness and depth. Some shops finish it with cream or butter for extra richness, and some are said to let it rest for several days before serving.
Why it took this shape
One account holds that after beef stew was introduced as a high-end item at Tokyo yoshoku restaurants in the Meiji era, it's said to have taken hold on home tables alongside the spread of packaged roux, running parallel to how 'white stew' became familiar nationwide through school lunches in the Showa era, and it remains a signature dish at hotel restaurants across the country.
Before you go
- How to shop at a supermarketHow to choose prepared foods, sashimi, and packaged sushi, when discount stickers tend to appear, region-only specialties, buying by weight, the checkout and bagging flow, and sampling etiquette at a local supermarket.
- Food for Obon and the harvest moon (tsukimi)A guide to the meat-free shojin ryori and somen served at Obon, and the tsukimi dango offered on the night of the harvest moon.
- At teishoku diners, shokudo, and machi-chukaA guide to the teishoku set-meal format, free rice refills, table placement, and paying at a shokudo-style diner.
Dishes in the same style
- HanbaaguA pan-fried patty of ground meat mixed with onion and breadcrumbs. Said to have shifted toward a fully cooked, bulked-up style to suit a food culture wary of raw ground meat.
- PikataThin meat coated in flour and beaten egg, then pan-fried in butter. Said to have settled in as a lighter, egg-only-coated line distinct from the breaded fried dishes of yoshoku cooking.
Ingredients and dishes from this land
Contrast
- HanbaaguA pan-fried patty of ground meat mixed with onion and breadcrumbs. Said to have shifted toward a fully cooked, bulked-up style to suit a food culture wary of raw ground meat.
- Pooku ChappuA thick-cut pork loin coated in a ketchup-based demi-glace-style sauce. Ketchup is said to have taken the place of madeira sauce in the style that stuck, and well-known shops remain scattered across Hokkaido.