Another name for this dish is red-stewed beef. The technique of stewing is recorded in texts surviving from the Zhou dynasty (1050-249 BC). In fact, bamboo slips itemizing food, seasonings and cooking methods found recently in archeological diggings, clearly indicate that keng (stew) was the main food in China from antiquity to the Han period (202 BC-AD 220). Keng was the forerunner of the method referred to today as red-stewed or red-cooked.
