Bulalo (beef bone marrow) noodle soup
Let’s have a few recipes before I tell you about the rest of the food we enjoyed during our six days and six nights vacation in the Visayas last week. There’s more to write about, really. Boracay wasn’t the only place we visited and the food we enjoyed after Boracay was much more stupendous. But more on that in the coming days. It’s back to reality for me which means cooking for the family at least twice a day, meeting twice weekly deadlines with the newspaper I write a column for and all that real stuff.
This bulalo noodle soup was a way of putting to good use a large pot of broth made with beef bones. This is not a bulalo soup in the strict sense of the word because the bones used were not bulalo-cut bones but scrap (soup) bones with the bone marrow intact. I get them cheaply from Shopwise. I buy a two kilos of bones, simmer them for hours, divide the broth into portions and use them for several different dishes. I’ll post two more soup dishes made with the broth from the same pot later. Right now, I’d like to tell you about my bulalo noodle soup.
Bulalo soup is a classic Filipino dish. It is a testament to the frugal ways of Filipino cooks for whom no part of an animal should go to waste. Bulalo is especially popular in the Southern Luzon provinces of Laguna, Batangas and Cavite. In Tagaytay City in Cavite, bulalo soup is available morning, noon and night time.
Noodle soups are an Asian staple. You will find noodle soups in every Asian cuisine. The fundamentals are the same — a good broth, noodles, vegetables, meat or seafood and garnish. Noodles vary from rice sticks to egg noodles to everything in between, vegetables include every imaginable variety and combination, garnish can be something as simple as toasted garlic bits or something as exotic as ground chicharon (pork cracklings), such as what we find in the Ilongo classic la paz batchoy.
This bulalo noodle soup combines the traditional Filipino bulalo soup with Vietnamese noodle soup. Why? Because the greens I used are ones commonly used in pho dishes — cilantro, mint and lemon basil. For an even more piquant flavor, I threw in a few slices of lime. Can you already imagine the flavors inside your head? 
Ingredients :
hofan noodles, boiled for 3 minutes, rinsed and plunged in ice water
a combination of fresh herbs — I suggest lemon basil, cilantro, Java mint and parsley
a few slices of lime
For the broth:
Beef bones with bone marrow
a whole onion
a whole garlic
1 tbsp. of peppercorns
patis (fish sauce)
Cooking procedure :
Place the bones in a pot. Boil for 10 minutes until the scum rises. Throw out the water, rinse the bones and the pot. Return the bones to the pot, refill with water, add the onion, garlic and peppersons, season with patis and simmer for at least two hours.
To serve, place the bones at the center of a large bowl, surround with the noodles, top with the trimmed herbs and pour in the simmering broth. Garnish with slices of lime, squeeze half a lime over everything and serve at once.
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Wow! Something new with bulalo.
Hor Fan as others would call it is a flat noodle if I’m not mistaken. Going around, among the fast food eating places in MM, Maxim (I forgot their new name and I’m not convinced they are on the same classification as Chow King – but let’s just ignore that for this time) is the only one I found serving hor fan noodle soup – seafood noodle soup (argh, the seafood they’re referring are the fish balls, but they’re great!). (The other one has closed already which served beef hor fan noodles – again, I forgot the name). I would say your recipe is worth trying for a change and adventure.
Going back to bulalo- for bulalo lovers, you may try bulalo stak at Kamayan Makati. It’s a kick-ass one.
talking about bulalo, these are my husband
favorite this winter. i mixed the regular beef
soup meat with just bones which are cheaper but
has more flavor.we are going to vietnam for
an 18 day tour next month and i’m looking forward
to go for some cooking class.
mareza
O, Trosp, ang cholesterol ha hehehehe
Wow, Mareza, what an awesome opportunity! I am green with envy.
hi tita connie. i’ve tried cooking with bulalo bones (with the marrow) before but for some reason, i always end up with a bone with a hole in the middle, with no more marrow… could it be because of boiling to hard? should it always be always on a simmer only to keep the marrow intact? thanks!
Masarap pa rin despite all the cholesterol!
mich, simmer only and not for too long. You just want the flavors from the bones, not tenderizing anything. If simmered too long, the bone marrow liquefies and mixes into the broth.
oh i see… but what if i want to add the kind with meat attached to it? if i only simmer for a short amount of time, is that enough to tenderize the meat and still keep marrow ala real bulalo?
mich, real bulalo has one end of the bone closed. That’s why the bone marrow stays inside no matter how long you simmer as long as the bone is positioned upright (hole side up) in the pot. But with scrap bones, both ends of the bone are open so the marrow slips into the broth.
okay, thank you! i will try to find bones with one side enclosed then.
Hi Connie, i like your new style, reading everything in just one page….keep up the good work for all of us, your readers…thanks for sharing. God Bless!
No prob, mich.
Ester, the one-page entry is okay for shorter posts. With longer posts with lots of photos, the page will take forever to load.
I had this once when I was in the Philippines… Except they forgot the soup..
Ang Sarap!
what a wonderful use of cheap scrap bones!