Shaking Beef, or Bò Lúc Lắc, is a delicious Vietnamese dish of marbled cubes of beef tossed in all the good stuff: soy sauce, oyster sauce, fish sauce, a little sugar, butter, and black pepper. Everything gets shaken around in the wok to get a nice all-around sear, hence the name…Shaking Beef!
It’s one of those dishes I order (or am tempted to order) almost every time I go out to eat Vietnamese—or more accurately, every time I stay in! So I had pretty high expectations for my own version. After much testing and trial and error (more on that below), we feel we’ve landed on our perfect Shaking Beef recipe.
It’s savory, balanced, and incredibly tasty. Serve it on a bed of lettuce, with sliced tomato and cucumber and some steamed rice, and you’re in for a delicious meal.
A Hard-Won Recipe
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been in a bit of a cooking rut! This Shaking Beef might have shaken me right out of it though. (Apologies but it was right there for the taking.)
Let me explain.
Having been food blogging for well over a decade now (eep!), it’s been a while since I’ve foraged out in the wilds of recipe development feeling completely without a paddle. I thought I had a pretty good idea of where to start with this bò lúc lắc recipe, and when I first made it, I was hoping it would be an easy-peasy slam dunk.
Sadly, a slam dunk it was not. It was flat. It didn’t help that I got subpar beef from the grocery store around the corner from my apartment at 9:30pm, trying to fit in some recipe development after a day of editing for our Youtube channel.
I brought the cold leftovers back to the family brain trust the next day. After a quick reheat, Sarah confirmed. Mediocre as mediocre could be, and not as zingy as a really good restaurant-style bò lúc lắc.
Turns out, like so many recipes we’ve wrestled with over the years, there’s a simple alchemy that takes a while to crack, but once you have it down, it’s easy. As the kids say iykyk, and as the boomers say, you don’t know what you don’t know!
How to Make the BEST Shaking Beef at Home
To summarize what was more than a few cracks at this dish, here are our keys to a delicious Shaking Beef:
- Long marinating time is key—overnight is best. You could get away with 8 hours too. Sneak into the 2 hour range, and you’re doing your expensive ribeye a bit of a disservice.
- A Chinese update is adding a little cornstarch to the beef marinade, a la velveting! We call for ribeye, which is so tender depending on the grade you get, it may not strictly need it. We didn’t notice this step in many of the other recipes we saw out there, but just a little bit adds a nice glossiness to the final dish as well as a succulent texture.
- The velveting continues! We found that removing the beef from the pan, cooking the onions, and then adding the steak back to the wok yielded the best result.
- The other vital step, revealed only after watching a video of a Vietnamese woman making this dish (no English subtitles!) is adding a tablespoon of unsalted butter at the end. It really brings the sauce together and gives it that extra something!
- A wok is nice to have and is indeed used by Vietnamese cooks, but is not strictly necessary. A cast iron, carbon steel, or stainless steel skillet, or even a nonstick pan will work so long as they are properly preheated (if not using nonstick, see my mom’s tip for creating a nonstick cooking surface.)
- A common accompaniment for this dish is lime juice and a blend of salt and pepper in a little pinch bowl for dipping or sprinkling. While that’s traditional, and it made it into our photos, the dish was plenty salty without it! That lime squeeze, though? Heavenly.
Shaking Beef Recipe Instructions
In a medium bowl, add the beef cubes, garlic, palm sugar/brown sugar, cornstarch, black pepper, oyster sauce, fish sauce, light soy sauce, and neutral oil. Mix with your hands to evenly coat the beef and allow it to absorb some of the marinade.
Cover with an overturned plate (this is our preferred method to use less plastic wrap!), refrigerate, and marinate overnight or at least 8 hours.
When you’re ready to cook the beef, first prepare your lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lime. The dish cooks quickly, and you want to enjoy it right away, so it’s best to have everything you need to serve it ready to go.
On a serving platter, add a bed of lettuce (however much or little you like). Arrange sliced tomatoes and cucumbers on either side of the plate, and add the lime wedges around the perimeter of the plate.
Heat a wok or skillet over medium-high heat until it’s just smoking (or, in the case of a nonstick skillet, just heat it until hot). Add 1 tablespoon of oil, and sear the beef cubes for 5 minutes, tossing periodically to brown all sides. Transfer the beef to a bowl.
Add the onions and another ½ tablespoon of oil. Cook for 2-3 minutes. If the pan is getting dry, add a splash of water to deglaze it.
Add the beef back to the wok, along with the dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, and finally the butter!
Give everything a toss to combine until the sauce is coating the beef and onions.
Transfer to your prepared serving platter, on top of your bed of lettuce, and serve with steamed rice!
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Recipe
Bò Lúc Lắc – Shaking Beef
Ingredients
For the beef and marinade:
- 1-1¼ pounds boneless ribeye (trimmed of any large pieces of excess fat and cut into 1 1/2-inch/4cm cubes)
- 3 garlic cloves (minced)
- 1 tablespoon palm sugar or brown sugar
- 1 teaspoon cornstarch
- 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon fish sauce
- 2 teaspoons light soy sauce
- 1 teaspoon neutral oil (such as canola, vegetable, or avocado oil)
For rest of the dish:
- Your preferred crunchy green lettuce (such as romaine, baby gem, or butter lettuce, washed and patted dry or run through a salad spinner)
- 1 medium seedless cucumber (sliced)
- 1 large tomato (thinly sliced and cut into half moons)
- 1 lime (cut into wedges)
- 1½ tablespoons neutral oil (such as canola, vegetable, or avocado oil; divided)
- 1 medium onion (sliced into thin wedges)
- ½ teaspoon dark soy sauce
- 1 tablespoon oyster sauce
- 1 tablespoon unsalted butter
Instructions
- In a medium bowl, add the beef cubes, garlic, palm sugar/brown sugar, cornstarch, black pepper, oyster sauce, fish sauce, light soy sauce, and neutral oil. Mix with your hands to evenly coat the beef. Cover with an overturned plate, refrigerate, and marinate overnight or at least 8 hours.
- When you’re ready to cook the beef, first prepare your lettuce, cucumbers, tomatoes, and lime. On a serving platter, add a bed of lettuce. Arrange sliced tomatoes and cucumbers on either side of the plate, and add the lime wedges around the perimeter of the plate.
- Heat a wok or skillet over medium-high heat until it’s just smoking (or, in the case of a nonstick skillet, just heat it until hot). Add 1 tablespoon of oil, and sear the beef cubes for 5 minutes, tossing periodically to brown all sides. Transfer the beef to a bowl.
- Add the onions and another ½ tablespoon of oil. Cook for 2-3 minutes. If the pan is getting dry, add a splash of water to deglaze it.
- Add the beef back to the wok, along with the dark soy sauce, oyster sauce, and finally the butter!
- Give everything a toss to combine until the sauce is coating the beef and onions. Transfer to your prepared serving platter, on top of your bed of lettuce, and serve with steamed rice.
