What Exactly Is Beef Bile And How Do You Use It?

If you're a grocery store tourist, you've likely strolled down the aisles of an international supermarket and delighted at the wild and wonderful ingredients gracing the shelves. One such ingredient that you might spot in a Filipino, Chinese, or Thai market is a tub of beef bile. So, what is it and how do you use it?

Beef bile is a digestive fluid that's produced by the liver and stored in the gallbladder of cows. Its job is to aid the digestive system by breaking down or emulsifying any large blobs of fat into smaller easier-to-manage particles that can then be turned into energy. This thin liquid is greeny-yellow in color and has a slight viscous quality to it. It also has an extremely bitter taste and grassy tang, which is why it's used in very small amounts in popular Southeast Asian dishes, such as Laab Diip and Beef Papaitan.

Some people are deterred from using beef bile because of its distinctively pungent smell and acquired taste. However, as it's used sparingly, its inherent odor adds character to those traditional meals where using the entirety of an animal (including its intestinal juices!) is lauded. Think of it as using fish sauce in Thai dishes; it sure has an aroma but it lends soups and stews a certain inimitable quality. Having said that, while you can get away with accidentally adding a few more dashes of fish sauce to a Thai red curry, the same can't be said for beef bile.

If you don't use beef bile in a measured fashion, its intense bitterness will overpower your entire meal. This is why it's occasionally diluted with water or added "to taste" in dishes like Filipino Papaitan stew, which is made with honeycomb-textured tripe and intestine. It's best to tread lightly, taste, and adjust your seasonings with great care as it has a very powerful tang to it. Beef bile is also used in very small amounts in Jeow Bee dipping sauce and Laab, a raw beef salad from Laos (half a teaspoon suffices to imbue a four-person serving with a blast of bitterness). 

Beef bile is used in powdered form instead of its natural liquid state in some Chinese delicacies. This is the case with a dish called Kusa, which hails from the Southern Yunnan area. This bitter dipping sauce for rice noodles and meat features fresh green herbs and chilies. As the beef bile lends the dip a brazen bitterness, the noodles are served on the side so diners can dunk them in quickly before eating. If you can't source beef bile for this dish you can substitute it with lime juice to create a brighter flavor. While this won't have the same vegetal bitterness of bile, it will mimic some of its tangy flavor.