Anne Cortz

I make this easy homemade beef tapa whenever I feel a Tapsilog craving. Tapa is an incredibly popular Filipino breakfast food, but it’s never eaten alone. It’s part of a trio- a plate of beef tapa, garlic fried rice and a fried egg. Translate them to Filipino, they are tapa-sinangag-itlog, earning it the official nickname Tapsilog, or simply, Tapsi. Switch out the beef tapa with other meats and you get countless variations of the -silog. But Tapsilog is the first, the #1, the flagship. Entire fast food chains are built on the tapa (ehem, Tapa King).

Pinoys living abroad such as myself have a small selection of imported frozen beef tapa to choose from. However, it is actually very easy to imitate them from scratch, especially here in Australia where beef is tender, bountiful and of excellent quality.

Of course it comes with rice

Garlic fried rice or sinangang is the rice of choice to match with beef tapa. Usually made with day-old rice, salted and stir-fried with garlic and oil. Guaranteed to warm your tummy on a cold morning. However, an easy homemade beef tapa should be paired with an easy homemade garlic rice. Sinangang is not difficult to make but I made it even simpler by making garlic rice straight from the rice cooker.

Which soy sauce?

You can use any soy sauce of course, but to get close to how beef tapa tastes like in the Philippines, then a Filipino brand soy sauce makes sense to use. I use Datu Puti in this recipe, however other brands such as Kikkoman will definitely make for a delicious soy sauce for the below recipe. Popular Filipino brands are Marca Pina, Silver Swan and Datu Puti.

Easy Homemade Beef Tapa

It's so easy to turn your steak into the favourite Filipino breakfast meat, Beef Tapa. Here's how!

• 250 g tender beef fillet, (your favourite steak- rump, blade, sirloin, etc)
• 4 tbsp soy sauce
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• oil for pan-frying

1. *See the Notes section below

2. Add your chopped garlic into your soy sauce.

3. Slice your steak into thin strips.

4. Pour the garlic-soy sauce marinade into the steak. You can choose to cook this straight away or refrigerate/freeze for another time.

5. Pan fry the beef tapa on medium heat until cooked through. Note that the garlic could burn if pan is too hot.

   
   
   

I would like you to use your senses more than strictly following the above measurements, especially with soy sauce amounts. Different brands of soy sauce from different countries can have different levels of saltiness.

Have a little taste of your soy sauce and gauge how much you need. There is no wrong way around this. If you put too little then you can dip your tapa in more soy sauce while eating, and if you added too much, you can eat more rice with every bite!

Beef tapa will turn out a bit salty because it is meant to be eaten with rice, just like most Filipino dishes. To get your beef tapa tasting as close to the ones in Philippines, use a Filipino brand soy sauce.

Breakfast

Filipino

April is Filipino Food Month, and this is just one of the posts I have about Filipino Food. If you fancy trying out a simple yet decadent Filipino sweet, you might want to check out this pastillas recipe using carabao’s milk.

I would love to hear about your cooking. Let’s chat on the comments below!