Video Instant Pot Beef Brisket Stew with Daikon Radish

This instant pot beef brisket stew with daikon radish is an authentic Chinese comfort food dish made easy in the pressure cooker.

Beef brisket is a very tough cut of meat, full of connective tissue. It’s also a nutritious cut of meat, that you can eat your collagen from. If the connective tissue is fully cooked through, beef brisket is ultra-delicious. This is why using a pressure cooker or Instant pot is a game-changer to properly cook the brisket in a significantly shorter amount of time.

Because beef brisket is so tough, I also have a great trick for cutting it easily – you will want to cook the brisket first, before cutting it into desired size. This trick is reflected in the recipe below that this instant pot beef brisket stew is cooked twice in the Instant Pot. The pause is the middle serves two purposes, one allowing the beef brisket to be cut into bite size, the other allowing the daikon radish to be added only near the end of the cooking process because daikon requires much less cooking time than the beef brisket. So many people (myself included when I started cooking beef brisket many years ago) makes the mistakes of cutting the beef brisket raw, wasting a lot of time and efforts; others cook the daikon radish along with the beef brisket from the beginning, which will result in overly cooked daikon.

The instant pot beef brisket stew with daikon radish is also a classic way to use daikon. Daikon generally pairs well with beef and benefits from soaking up the flavours of a meat. But daikon can also be used in a raw vegan style, try this Ginger Orange Pickled Daikon + Immune Shot recipe, which is also Paleo, Whole30 and Vegan. You will love it!

One last thing to point out, before I dive right into the recipe: in Chinese cooking, meats are always blanched first for stew or soup recipes. This step is very important in order to yield beautiful broth. Although some people prefer to skim the foam and scum from the top and reuse the same water in the recipe, my preference is always to discard the blanching water. Here are a few more examples where I blanch and discard the first boil of water in Chinese soup recipes:

Ginseng Chicken Soup: The Ultimate Nourishing Soup for Energy, Brain Function and Immune Support
Instant Pot Shiitake Ginger Chicken Bone Broth (All Purpose Asian Stock)
Natural PMS Remedy: PMS Relief Herbal Chicken Soup (四物汤)
Adrenal Support Chinese Herbs And Pig Stomach Soup (四神汤)

Now that we have ensured the meats are blanched, the final broth of the dish will be clean and beautiful. In addition, the broth of the Instant Pot beef brisket stew will also be delicious and nutritious. I usually have left over broth after all the beef brisket and daikon are eaten. The broth will make a wonderful base for noodle soup the next day.