The sizzle of garlic calls three dishes to the table
Drop garlic into hot oil and the edges of the thin slices start to bubble. Once the aroma rises, in goes cold rice, which you dry out against the hot sides of the pan. In another pot, beef stock scented with star anise sends up steam, and beef coated in soy sauce and sugar takes on a deep, glossy sheen.
Beef pares is a Filipino sweet-and-savory braised beef served with garlic fried rice and a clear beef soup. Pile only the meat into a bowl and you have a rich beef stew. Set the soup and rice apart, though, and work a little of the sauce into the rice as you eat, and the outline of the combination loved at street stalls and neighborhood eateries comes into focus.
The trickiest part in a home kitchen isn't how long it takes to make the beef tender. It's keeping the stock clear. Instead of cooking the beef in soy sauce from the start, you blanch it, simmer it with aromatics, and set that liquid aside for the soup. Only the meat moves into the sweet soy sauce, so one round of prep gives you both a rich plate and a light bowl of broth.
Star anise isn't a spice that should hit you on the first bite. Two pods in the braising liquid, leaving a sweet, medicinal note somewhere behind the beef fat and soy sauce, is a level you can happily eat again and again at home. If you can't find it, don't compensate with a heavy hand of five-spice powder. Leaving it out entirely and building the dish on beef stock and garlic keeps the whole thing in balance.
In English it's written Pares or Beef Pares. This article calls the dish beef pares and uses sinangag, the Filipino term, for the garlic fried rice.
Where the name comes from, and a plate at a Filipino eatery
Pares corresponds to the English word "pair," and the name is explained as coming from the pairing of sweet soy-braised beef asado with sinangag and a light beef soup. The stew isn't meant to stand alone: the rice takes the edge off the rich sauce, and the soup resets your palate. The short name holds the whole way of eating it.
As for its origin, rather than pinning it to a single era as an old home dish from all over the Philippines, the safer account is the one in the sources: the carinderia Jonas in Quezon City is said to have popularized this combination in 1979, and it's told as the starting point of the name. Beef, rice and soup as one meal took hold at specialist shops called paresan and at carinderias, the casual eateries serving everyday food. The cut of beef, the sweetness and the strength of the soup change from one eatery to the next, so even when you bring it into your own kitchen, this isn't a dish with one right answer.
Picture it on a table in the Philippines and the big chunks of beef aren't the only star. White rice or garlic fried rice goes on the plate, the dark beef sits beside it, and hot soup comes alongside in a small bowl. Put chopped scallions, fried garlic, chili-spiked vinegar and calamansi on the table, and everyone can adjust the sweetness and salt themselves. Serving the three at different temperatures and intensities, rather than ladling stew and liquid together from one pot, gets you closer to how a local eatery puts it together.
It's also a dish where differences between styles of shop show more clearly than regional ones. The style that keeps the sweet beef asado on its own is marked by a rich sauce heavy on star anise and sugar. Meanwhile the street-corner, cart-style versions called pares kanto or pares kariton may combine beef and soup and thicken them a little with starch. Some shops hold back on sweetness and spice and put the savoriness of shank, tendon and bone marrow up front.
Swap the rice for noodles and you get pares mami. It layers pares onto mami, a beef-broth noodle soup, so what soaks up the sauce changes compared with rice-based pares. Some customers choose plain white rice, so while garlic rice is an important part of the format, it isn't the only option. At home, make the trio first, then switch to white rice or noodles the next day to see how far the dish can go.
Make the beef sauce strong enough that you can taste it even when only a little is worked into the rice. Keep the soup light, not stained all the way with soy sauce, so you can taste the aromatics and beef stock. If the garlic rice is heavily seasoned too, the three dishes compete, so go easy on the salt and let it handle the toasty note.
The flavor backbone: star anise sits behind the sweetness
Compare recipes written for Filipino cooks and a common thread emerges: blanch or simmer the beef, set aside the stock, then reduce the meat separately with soy sauce, brown sugar and star anise. Primebeef's recipe simmers the beef gently before bringing the sauce together with sugar; Kawaling Pinoy blanches the beef to keep the soup from clouding and makes sinangag with cooled rice. The Instant Pot Philippines recipe also handles stock, soy sauce, sugar, star anise and thickening separately after the meat is tender.
This recipe is rebuilt not around a short pressure-cooker setting but around a stovetop pot where you can watch the stock. Beef shank varies a lot from piece to piece, and the same 90 minutes can leave a skewer sliding in differently. Rather than keeping it at a boil to rush the meat tender, hold a low heat where the surface just trembles, then reduce the sauce at the end.
| Flavor role | Result | How to judge it in the kitchen |
|---|---|---|
| Sweet-savory beef sauce | Salt from soy sauce, rounded sweetness from sugar | Reduce until a line drawn across the pan bottom with a wooden spatula holds for 1 second |
| Clear beef soup | Light savoriness of meat and aromatics | Discard the blanching water and simmer gently in fresh water |
| Star anise | A sweet aroma deep in the sauce | 2 pods for 600 g of meat. Fine to remove once fragrant |
| Garlic rice | Toasty grains and a lingering garlic note | Spread out cooled rice and drive off the stickiness |
Taste the sauce, soup and rice separately. If you taste only the sauce and add more soy sauce, it will be too salty once combined with rice and soup. Turn off the heat when the sauce is "a little short when spooned over rice," then sharpen it after plating with scallions or lemon. That's the easier way to adjust.
Ingredients (serves 4)
Cut the beef shank into even 4 cm (1 1/2 in) cubes so it all turns tender at the same time. Beef chuck or brisket also works, but lean beef round tends to stay tough even after the same cooking time, before you've even reduced the sauce. The amount of water depends on the size of your pot, so if the meat pokes above the surface while it simmers, add boiling water 50–100 ml at a time.
Soy sauce may contain wheat and soy. If you need to avoid wheat, switch to a tamari or gluten-free soy sauce after checking the ingredient label, but sodium varies by product, so add it to the sauce a little at a time. Wash the cutting boards and tools used for the beef, soy sauce, starch and rice separately from those used for serving.
Method
Simmer the beef in the stock until tender first, then combine it with the sauce in a separate pan. If you simmer it in the sauce from the start, the flavor gets too strong before the meat turns tender.
The quantities match the ingredient tables above. Use a pot of about 22–24 cm (9 in), a shallow pot or skillet for the sauce, and a wide pan for frying the rice. Don't judge the meat's tenderness by time alone; go by whether a skewer slides through and how thickly the sauce clings.
Fixing mistakes: know where to add liquid
Beef pares separates the step that makes the meat tender from the step that concentrates the flavor. Adding sugar and soy sauce to tough meat won't fix the center; you'll just be left with a thick sauce on the bottom of the pan. When something goes wrong, work out whether the problem is in the meat, the sauce or the soup, and you can rescue it without wrecking the flavor.
| What happened | Likely cause | How to fix it |
|---|---|---|
| The sauce is rich but the meat is tough | Reduced before the meat was tender | Remove only the meat, add 150 ml unsalted stock or water and simmer on low for 20 minutes. Return it to the sauce once tender |
| The stock turned cloudy | A hard boil mixed fat and protein into the liquid | Turn off the heat, wait 5 minutes and strain the clear top layer through a fine-mesh sieve. Even if it doesn't turn clear, the flavor is still usable |
| The sauce is too salty | The soy sauce is saltier than expected | Separate the beef and sauce, add 50 ml unsalted stock to the sauce and warm it over low heat. Don't add sugar alone |
| The star anise is too forward | Too many pods, or simmered too long | Remove them immediately and add 50 ml stock to the sauce. Serve with extra rice and scallions |
| The garlic is bitter | Rice went in after the slices had darkened | Remove the bitter garlic, replace just 2 tsp of the oil with fresh, and reheat the rice |
If you add a lot of starch from the start when the sauce is thin, the soy flavor won't spread into the rice and you're left with a heavy, gravy-like coating. First cook off the water over medium-low heat and watch how quickly the spatula line closes. Add a little dissolved starch only if the sauce runs almost entirely off the meat when you lift a piece.
Bringing the Filipino way of eating to your dinner table
What makes pares fun is how it turns a braise into a small three-part meal. Take a piece of beef, drip a little sauce onto the rice, layer on the toasty garlic, then take a sip of soup. Because white rice alone isn't left to absorb all that rich flavor, the sweetness of the beef never gets monotonous.
Stall and eatery styles leave room for adding chopped scallions, fried garlic, chilies and sour condiments. At home, set out lemon in place of calamansi and put chili vinegar in small dishes so everyone can adjust the heat. Leaving chilies out of the beef pot from the start makes it easier for kids and anyone avoiding spice to share the same pot.
The regional variations easiest to pin down are pares kanto/kariton and pares mami, mentioned earlier. The street-corner style combines beef and soup, and the thickness and richness of tendon and marrow come forward. The noodle version, mami, makes the soup the star and sets the sauced beef on top as a topping. To lean toward either at home, stir about 2 tbsp of the beef sauce into the soup and thicken it lightly, or swap the garlic rice for wheat noodles. Either way, make the change knowing it's a different way of eating from this trio, and the flavor stays on target.
To build a menu, rather than adding sour Filipino sinigang (in Japanese) to the same table, a plate of stir-fried greens or quick-pickled cucumber keeps the sweet-savory beef and soup in their roles. If you're cooking Filipino food several days running, put adobo (in Japanese), meat braised in soy sauce and vinegar, on a different day, or serve tinola (in Japanese), a clear ginger chicken soup, in place of a side dish.
Substitutions: decide which aromas to keep with what you can find
You don't need to import every Filipino ingredient. What defines pares isn't how many ingredients carry local names; it's finishing the beef sauce, the clear stock and the garlic rice separately. When substituting, choose based on whether the ingredient's role changes.
| Filipino ingredient or practice | Easy substitute | What changes and how to use it |
|---|---|---|
| Beef brisket, shank, chuck | Beef shank, beef chuck | Cuts with some sinew and fat suit a slow simmer better than lean round |
| Brown sugar | Dark muscovado, raw cane sugar, light brown sugar | Muscovado is richer. With white sugar, don't increase the amount, and let the soy sauce aroma come through |
| Filipino soy sauce | Regular dark soy sauce | With a saltier brand, don't add all 60 ml at once; start with 50 ml and taste |
| Star anise | Whole star anise | If replacing with five-spice powder, start at 1/4 tsp. If the aroma is strong, don't force more in |
| Calamansi | Lemon or lime | Leave it out of the braise and squeeze it in at serving to put the acidity in the right place |
| Sinangag | Garlic rice made with cooled short- or medium-grain rice | For sticky rice, spread it on a plate after cooking and cool for 30 minutes so it fries more easily |
Leave out the star anise and the sweet aroma that links the dish to Filipino-Chinese asado fades. But as long as you keep the thickness of the sauce, the lightness of the beef stock and the garlic rice, the structure of beef with rice and soup holds. On the other hand, if you try to make up for it with cinnamon or several kinds of five-spice, it drifts away from pares into a different spiced braise.
Shopping: use whole star anise, a little at a time
If you can find just a few star anise pods on the Asian foods shelf of your grocery store, that's all you need. If you can't find it nearby and plan to keep making Filipino, Taiwanese or Chinese braises, keeping around 50 g of whole star anise on hand lets you measure out the 2 pods each time. Whole pods are easier to fish out of the pot than powder, and you can stop the aroma the moment it's enough; that's the reason to choose them.
If you're making pares just once, it's fine to skip the star anise. Getting the three components right with the soy sauce, dark sugar and beef shank you already have will do more for a first attempt than chasing a single aroma.
Cooking garlic rice often? A wide pan pays off
Frying 4 servings of cooled rice at once in an ordinary small skillet piles the grains up so the steam can't escape. Working in small batches, the skillet you have is perfectly adequate. A wide carbon-steel wok of around 33 cm (13 in) only makes sense if you regularly cook fried rice, stir-fried noodles and vegetable stir-fries, or want to spread out garlic rice and drive off the moisture in one go. If you've never used carbon steel or cook on induction, use a wide skillet rather than buying one you haven't confirmed works on your stove.
Nutrition: whole recipe and per serving
The nutrition values for this recipe are an estimate for the full batch, calculated with 600 g beef shank, 600 g cooked rice, 45 ml oil, 60 ml soy sauce and 25 g sugar. They vary with the fat on the beef, the sodium in the soy sauce and the moisture in the rice, so they aren't figures for medical or dietary guidance. Divided among 4, one serving comes to roughly 630 kcal, 32 g protein, 25 g fat, 59 g carbohydrates, 1.5 g fiber and 1,350 mg sodium.
Storage and reheating: keep meat, soup and rice apart
Transfer leftovers into separate containers for the beef and sauce, the soup and the garlic rice. Don't leave them at room temperature in a deep pot; divide them into shallow containers to cool and refrigerate or freeze within about 2 hours of cooking. In a hot room, refrigerate even sooner. The FDA likewise advises refrigerating or freezing leftovers within 2 hours and dividing them into shallow containers so they cool quickly.
Move refrigerated beef and sauce to a small pot, add 1–2 tbsp water or stock and warm over low heat for 6–8 minutes. Heat the soup in a separate pot until just below a boil. Microwave the rice at 600 W for 1 minute 30 seconds, then stir, adding 30 seconds at a time if any part is still cold. Rice tends to harden in the fridge, so make only as much as you'll finish by the next day, and freeze individual portions for longer storage.
To freeze, let the beef and sauce and the soup cool slightly, divide into single portions, and aim to use them within 2–3 weeks for best home quality. Thaw in the refrigerator, and reheat the sauce and soup until hot all the way through. If you notice anything off in smell or color, or a bulging container, don't try to save it by reheating; throw it out.
FAQ: pares quantities and how to eat it
Q. Can I make just the braised beef?
The beef asado alone makes a fine sweet-savory beef stew, but the combination behind the dish's name gets lost. On days when garlic rice is too much work, serve plain white rice; if you can't make a separate soup, serve a little of the simmering stock alongside. Plating so the meat, rice and broth each keep their role is what makes it eat like pares.
Q. I don't like star anise. What can I use instead?
The best substitute is to add nothing at all. If you really want to make up the aroma, use just 1/4 tsp five-spice powder and check the aroma while the sauce is simmering. Adding more cinnamon or cloves on their own gives you a different spiced braise, not the sweet aroma of star anise.
Q. Can I speed it up with a pressure cooker?
After blanching and washing the meat and pot, add 1.2 L water and the aromatics; plan on 25 minutes at pressure and 10 minutes of natural release. Follow your model's guidance on water volume and release method, then separate the meat and stock once the pressure is released and reduce the sauce uncovered. If you try to finish everything in the pressure cooker, the meat will be tender but the sauce won't take on its gloss.
Q. My beef shank isn't tender after 90 minutes.
Check whether the liquid has dropped and part of the meat is sticking out above the surface; add 50–100 ml boiling water and keep it on low heat. If the skewer still meets resistance, extend by 10 minutes at a time. If you already added the sauce ingredients and concentrated it, take out only the meat, simmer it again in 150 ml unsalted stock, and return it to the sauce once tender.
Q. Can I swap the garlic rice for plain white rice?
Absolutely. With white rice, the sweetness of the beef and the lightness of the soup come through even more clearly. On days when you want to keep some of sinangag's toastiness, try a shortcut: skip frying the rice and just mix the fried garlic and 1 tsp of its oil into freshly cooked rice.
Q. What variations can I try?
Leftover beef and sauce can go in several directions:
- Add a little stock, thicken it and combine it with the beef, pares kanto style.
- Swap the garlic rice for egg noodles and pour in plenty of beef stock for something closer to pares mami.
- Replace some of the shank with beef tendon and extend the cooking time for a gelatin-rich texture.
- Serve chili vinegar and lemon on the side so everyone adjusts the heat and acidity.
- Cut the beef small and mix it into the next day's rice with just a little sauce for fried rice.
Sources
- Wikipedia, “Pares (food)” — checked for the trio, the etymology, pares kanto/kariton and pares mami. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pares_(food) Accessed and checked: September 3, 2026 (JST)
- Instant Pot Philippines, “Instant Beef Pares” — checked for 4-serving quantities and the method of cooking the beef before handling the stock, soy sauce, sugar and star anise. https://www.instantpot.com.ph/recipe/instant-beef-pares Accessed and checked: September 3, 2026 (JST)
- Primebeef Co., “BEEF PARES” — checked for beef, star anise, soy sauce, brown sugar, gentle simmering and finishing. https://primebeef.com.ph/pages/recipes-and-tips/beef-pares Accessed and checked: September 3, 2026 (JST)
- Kawaling Pinoy, “Beef Pares with Garlic Fried Rice” — checked for blanching to keep the stock clear, cuts of beef, cooled rice and storage. https://www.kawalingpinoy.com/beef-pares/ Accessed and checked: September 3, 2026 (JST)
- U.S. Food and Drug Administration, “Refrigerator Thermometers - Cold Facts about Food Safety” — checked for the advice to refrigerate or freeze leftovers within 2 hours and cool them in shallow containers. https://www.fda.gov/food/buy-store-serve-safe-food/refrigerator-thermometers-cold-facts-about-food-safety Accessed and checked: September 3, 2026 (JST)
