Kare-kare is a Filipino oxtail stew in a thick peanut sauce coloured orange with annatto. You simmer oxtail until fall-apart tender, build a sauce from beef broth, peanut butter and toasted ground rice, then add banana heart, string beans, eggplant and bok choy. The sauce is kept mild on purpose — you season each bite with salty bagoong at the table.
What is kare-kare
Kare-kare is one of the grand dishes of Filipino cooking — the kind that anchors a fiesta, a birthday, or a leisurely Sunday family lunch. Its signature is a rich, nutty sauce built on ground peanuts and tinted a warm orange by atsuete (annatto seeds). Traditionally it is made with oxtail, often with tripe or beef added, and a specific set of vegetables. The sauce is thick enough to coat everything generously and cling to a mound of rice.
The name is thought to trace back either to the word for curry or to the Kapampangan cooks who helped refine it; either way, it has been part of the Filipino table for well over a century and remains a marker of a truly special meal. When someone cooks kare-kare, you know the occasion matters — it takes time, patience and a bit of love, and it is always meant to be shared around a full table.
The clever part is the seasoning. The peanut sauce is only lightly salted because it is always served with bagoong — a salty, savoury sauteed fermented shrimp paste (bagoong alamang) — spooned on at the table. The two are a pair: mild sauce, punchy bagoong, balanced by each diner to taste. This is worth understanding before you cook, because it changes how you season the pot. For more celebratory mains, browse the Kusina recipe hub and the beloved adobo.
Ingredients
This makes about 6 generous servings.
- 1.5 kg oxtail, cut into sections (add beef tripe if you like)
- 1/2 cup peanut butter (or 3/4 cup ground toasted peanuts)
- 3 tablespoons toasted ground rice
- 2 tablespoons annatto (atsuete) seeds, or 2 tablespoons annatto powder
- 1 large onion, chopped, and 5 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 banana heart (puso ng saging), sliced (optional)
- 1 bundle string beans (sitaw), cut into 5 cm lengths
- 2 Asian eggplants, sliced, and 1 bunch bok choy or pechay
- 3 tablespoons cooking oil
- Fish sauce or salt, only if needed
- Bagoong alamang (sauteed shrimp paste), to serve
A few notes on the essentials. Oxtail is the classic and, for many, the best cut — it is gelatinous and gives the broth wonderful body — but it needs time. Peanuts are the soul of the dish; freshly ground toasted peanuts give the deepest flavour, while natural peanut butter is the convenient everyday route. Annatto is for colour more than taste, lending that appetising orange hue. And bagoong is non-negotiable as a companion, because the whole dish is built around it.
How to cook kare-kare
- Boil the oxtail in plenty of water until very tender — about 2 to 3 hours on the stove, or under an hour in a pressure cooker. Skim off the foam as it rises, and keep the flavourful broth.
- Make annatto water: steep the annatto seeds in 1/2 cup warm water for a few minutes, then strain and keep the red liquid. (Annatto powder can simply be stirred into water.)
- In a wide pan, heat the oil and saute the garlic and onion until soft.
- Pour in about 3 cups of the reserved beef broth and the annatto water.
- Stir in the peanut butter until it melts into a smooth, terracotta-coloured sauce.
- Add the toasted ground rice and simmer, stirring, until the sauce thickens enough to coat a spoon.
- Return the tender oxtail to the pan and simmer so it soaks up the sauce.
- Blanch or add the banana heart, string beans and eggplant, cooking just until tender. Add the bok choy last so it stays green.
- Taste carefully. Add fish sauce only if it truly needs it — remember the bagoong will bring salt. Serve hot with rice and a dish of bagoong on the side.
Do not over-salt the sauce. The most common kare-kare mistake is seasoning the sauce as if it were the finished dish. It is meant to taste gently nutty and slightly under-salted, because every diner adds bagoong to taste. Keep it mild and let the shrimp paste do its job at the table.
The traditional vegetables
| Vegetable | Tagalog | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Banana heart | Puso ng saging | Classic; slice and blanch to remove bitterness |
| String beans | Sitaw | Cut into short lengths; keep a little bite |
| Eggplant | Talong | Soaks up the peanut sauce beautifully |
| Bok choy / pechay | Pechay | Add last so it stays bright green |
Prepare the vegetables so they keep their character. Blanch them separately in salted water and add them near the end rather than stewing them into the sauce — you want tender-crisp string beans, silky eggplant and vivid green pechay, not a uniform softness. The contrast of fresh vegetables against the heavy peanut sauce is a big part of what makes kare-kare feel balanced despite its richness.
Toast the rice for real texture. Dry-toast raw rice in a pan until golden and fragrant, then grind it fine. It thickens the sauce and adds a subtle nutty aroma you simply cannot get from cornstarch. This traditional thickener is the difference between a sauce that merely clings and one that has genuine body and depth.
Bagoong: the essential partner
You cannot really talk about kare-kare without talking about bagoong. The version served with it is bagoong alamang — tiny fermented shrimp, usually sauteed with garlic, onion and a little sugar until it turns savoury, faintly sweet and intensely umami. It is salty and pungent on its own, and that is exactly the point: the peanut sauce is deliberately mild so each diner can spoon on as much bagoong as they like, seasoning their own plate bite by bite. Start with a small amount, mix it into a forkful of oxtail, sauce and rice, and adjust from there. Sauteed (ginisang) bagoong is milder and more balanced than raw; look for it in jars at any Filipino store, or saute plain bagoong at home with a little garlic, onion and a pinch of sugar until it mellows. This partnership of a gentle sauce and a bold condiment is the heart of the dish, and skipping the bagoong means missing half of what makes kare-kare special.
Tips and easier versions
Patience with the oxtail is everything. Under-cooked, it is chewy and disappointing; given its full 2 to 3 hours (or a proper turn in the pressure cooker), it becomes tender enough to slip off the bone, and the collagen enriches the broth you later build the sauce on. Do not rush this stage — it is where the whole dish is won or lost.
Short on time or budget? Use beef chunks or beef shank instead of oxtail; they cook a little faster and are easier to find abroad. There are also well-loved lighter versions: kare-kareng gulay (a vegetable kare-kare) and seafood kare-kare, both of which keep the same peanut-annatto sauce and the same bagoong pairing. The sauce is the identity of the dish, so it adapts happily to what you have.
Make-ahead is your friend here. The oxtail and its broth, and even the peanut sauce, can be prepared a day in advance and refrigerated; the flavours deepen overnight and the long simmering is done before your guests arrive. Keep the blanched vegetables separate and add them only when you reheat, so they stay bright and do not turn to mush. Warm everything through gently, adjust the consistency with a little reserved broth if the sauce has thickened in the fridge, and finish with fresh bagoong on the side. Handled this way, even a dish as involved as kare-kare becomes manageable for a special lunch.
Kare-kare is a centrepiece, so it shines brightest on a shared table. Serve it alongside pork sisig and pininyahang manok, and it is right at home during Filipino Christmas celebrations. Finish the meal with cool, creamy maja blanca to balance all that richness. Cooking kare-kare is a small act of generosity in itself — the long simmer, the careful sauce, the vegetables prepared just so. Serve it in a big bowl in the middle of the table, let everyone reach in and season their own plate with bagoong, and you have exactly the kind of unhurried, shared meal the dish was made for.