Sauce beef and stewed mutton

"Sauce beef" can be bought all over the country. I have eaten sauced beef from many places, but I think Beijing's sauced beef and stewed mutton are still delicious.
Meat made with soy sauce, as the name suggests, is made using sauce methods. You must use old Beijing yellow sauce to be authentic and taste mellow. In many places, miso soup blended with soy sauce and soy sauce is used. The meat produced by the sauce is very dark in color and tastes much inferior. Some even have a strange smell!
Spices used for sauced meat must be complete. In principle, less heavy spices should be added and more light spices can be added. Each spice must be matched just right to reflect the special taste of sauced beef.
The most famous one of the "pickled beef, roasted mutton, stewed mutton" in old Beijing is the famous "Yuesheng Zhai", which has a history of hundreds of years. What makes its practice different is that it strictly adheres to the traditional blending of old soup and the use of heat during the sauce making process.
The sauce beef made by "Yueshengzhai" every day must be mixed with a certain amount of old soup. Moreover, the firepower and sauce making time must be enough, and must not be sloppy. The spices use homemade ground spice powder rather than the ingredients used. The taste of the meat is extraordinary, and the tempting aroma can be smelled from a long distance!
In Beijing, the business of sauce beef and mutton is generally run by Hui masters, and the taste is special! I heard from the old master that usually more star anise is used for sauce beef, while more pepper is used for sauce mutton. Other spices used are the same. Due to the limited conditions for making at home, everything can only be simplified, but the main raw materials are indispensable. Otherwise, there will be no aroma of sauce beef and the flavor characteristics of old Beijing will be lost!
There is another most inconspicuous trick to sauce beef and mutton. In fact, it is both simple and important. That is, before sauce the meat, you must soak the meat for a few hours. Moreover, the meat cannot be blanched with boiling water. You must directly put the raw meat into the pot. Only then will the meat taste and cook quickly.
Today, we will make this old Beijing-style "sauce beef" according to the family's production method. Because I sauce a piece of beef and a piece of mutton at the same time, it is called "sauce beef, stewed mutton". The specific practices are as follows;