Filipino’s special occasions are not considered extravagant without kare kare served in their table. Karekare, is a popular beef stew recipe that originated in the central Luzon province known as Pampanga. Pampanga is known for their flavorful recipe and among them are Menudo, Mechado, Sisig and Kare Kare. Kare kare is usually cook using beef meat, tripe’s or oxtail. The sauce is thickened with ground roasted glutinous rice flavor with homemade peanut butter to enhance taste. The basic vegetables for kare kare are eggplant, banana blossom, Chinese cabbage and stringbeans. Traditionally, kare kare is being prepared with annatto oil for food coloring and served with shrimp paste as side dish. The Barrio Fiesta restaurant in the Philippines became popular for serving original Filipino recipes and one of them is kare kare, but you don’t have to dine in expensive restaurant just to taste this delicious recipe. The cooking process is simple, just follow my step by step procedure below.

Kare Kare Ingredients:

1 kg beef tripe

Oxtail

½ kg Beef

2-3 medium size eggplant

2-3 bundle Chinese cabbage

1 banana blossom

1-2 bundle Stringbean, cut 1″ length

Annatto oil

Peanut butter 1 cup

¼ kg Ground fried glutinous rice dissolve in water (Slurry)

3 tbsp Cooking

4-5 tbsp minced garlic

2 pcs onion, slice

Fish sauce

Procedure for Cooking:

Cut, wash meat ingredients into serving size, cut and wash vegetables and set aside. In a big casserole just enough to contain meat, add 2 liters of water to tenderize meat, bring to boil and simmer for 2-3 hours until meat tenderize, add water if needed. You can also use pressure cooker to hasten the cooking procedure. Be careful when using a pressure cooker to avoid accident. Once meats are tenderized, separate meat from the broth, keep broth for later use. Using a separate casserole, bring to a boil 1 liter of water and upon boiling add carefully the vegetables to blanch for 1 minute, set aside. In a separate pan, saute garlic and onion, add tenderized meat and 1/8 cup of fish sauce. Simmer for few minutes or until sauce almost dries up. Mix sauteed meat with the meat broth, the broth should be 1 1/2″ above from meat level. Add peanut butter, simmer for a few minutes. Lastly add annatto oil for food coloring and slurry to thicken sauce. Simmer for another 5-10 minutes to make sure that ground rice is cooked properly, continuous stirring to even consistency. Add blanch vegetables on a serving platter and scoop kare kare to cover vegetable. Serve kare kare with shrimp paste as a side dish with hot white rice.