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SubscribeSaturday, February 9, 2008
Vietnamese Pho: Beef Noodle Soup
What the Pho?!
I’ve been working hard perfecting the techniques and recipe for Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup, or Pho, just for you. It’s taken years of kitchen experiments, eating out and scouring for good recipes. Of all the cookbooks that I own, the best recipe that I’ve found for Pho is from:
Andrea Nguyen’s 
Into the Vietnamese Kitchen, which is one of the most comprehensive books on the cuisine of Vietnam. The book also won nominations for a James Beard Foundation award and two International Association of Culinary Professionals (IACP). Definitely a must-have book for Asian food lovers.
So, let’s get right to the Vietnamese Beef Pho Recipe!
The dish is pronounced “fuh” and not “foo” or “foe” or “puh”
Yeah, Pho is cheap eat out…but to be able to make a home made version? Pretty Pho-king amazing, if you ask me.
Pho Spices
It’s best if you can get each spice separately, but I do find that the spice packets are pretty convenient. They cost less than $2.00 and even come with a mesh bag to put all the spices in. Spices include cinnamon sticks, cloves, coriander pods, star anise and cardamom. Whatever you do, don’t use the Pho spice paste that comes in a jar or can. Nasty stuff, that’s Pho-sho’.
Best Bones for Pho
Leg and knuckle bones are the best to make the stock. See that wonderful yellow marrow below in the photo? That’s pure flavoring that makes your Pho taste full, meaty and rich. But let’s say that you can’t find leg/knuckle bones. Go ahead and use whatever beef bones your supermarket has and just supplement with some oxtail bones or a pound of beef meat (rump, chuck, brisket, etc.) for extra flavor.
Bones are parboiled first for a good 10 minutes in rapidly boiling water – this gets rid of the yucky impurities like blood particles and extra fat. You’ll see gray foam float up to the surface as you boil. After 10 minutes, dump out all of the water, rinse out your pot, rinse the bones, and refill with clean, cool water. I know it’s an extra step, but this will give you the pure, clean-tasting broth.
This is just after blanching – the golden gelatinous goodness is where all the flavor and body is.
UPDATE 4/11/2010 I started getting comments of the broth being too greasy — and after 8 pots of testing, I found out why. When I normally make pho broth, I use a combination of knuckle and leg bones, normally with 20% of the bones having the marrow (below photo). When I started increasing the % of bones with marrow – the broth started getting too fatty. I guess too much of a good stuff is not a good thing! 
The fattiness is easy to remedy. Refrigerate overnight and just discard the layer of fat that accumulates on top. For best results though, keep the bones with marrow to 20%.
Charring Onions and Ginger
Charring or roasting the onions and ginger gives you a wonderfully mellow and naturally sweet flavor. I used to char over an open flame on my stovetop with a pair of tongs, but that got pretty tiring. Plus, metal tongs + long time over flame = very hothothot hands. So now, I just raise my oven rack to the highest position and turn my broiler on. See how golden the ginger gets?
Damn Scumbag!
So here is my broth boilin’ away with the mesh bag of spices, charred ginger, charred onions and beef bones. You can see floating bits of fat and the damn scumbag.
Fat & marrow bits = good eats. Try to keep that in the broth!
But gotta get rid of the scum! I use a very, very fine mesh strainer designed just for scum. heh. A scumbag strainer. Can you imagine if I had a line of cookware and tools – “Steamy Kitchen Scumbag Strainer.” Straining the scum keeps your broth pure and clean. The lower the simmer, the less scum you have.
A note on broth simmering time – I simmer the broth for 3 hours. According to both Andrea Nguyen and Corinne Trang (author of Authentic Vietnamese Cooking and former editor and director of Saveur’s test kitchen) – all of the flavors in the bone have been extracted after 3 hours.
Thin Sliced Meat
You can use a thinly sliced flank steak, london broil, sirloin, eye of round or tri-tip. Instead of beef slices, you could use beef balls (Bo Vien) found in the freezer section of your Asian market. The secret to cutting meat is to cut across the grain. You want your beef slices as thin as possible, and I always throw the whole chunk of meat in the freezer for 15 minutes to make it easier to slice thinly.
Pho Noodles
 |
Vietnamese Beef Noodle Soup typically uses rice noodles. You can buy them dried or fresh. I love the slippery softness of fresh noodles (look in the refrigerator or freezer section) Most restaurants will use dried, flat rice noodles. Look for ones that are medium thickness and flat like these. |
Pho-tastic Condiments
 |
On the tables of every Pho restaurant, you’ll see these two condiments, Cock Sauce (Sriracha hot chili sauce) and Hoisin Sauce. You can squirt and slather as much of these two condiments as you want…but I’m a purist.If I’m going to spend a couple of hours carefully crafting a rich, flavor-packed, clean soup – I better taste every damn drop. Condiment sauces just get in the way.
Sometimes, I’ll squirt a bit of each sauce in a little dish and dip my meat in the sauce as I take a bite. You ask….why do we call it Cock sauce? See that rooster on the bottle? |
Pho Vegetables and Herbs
Fresh mint, cilantro, basil, bean sprouts, limees, sliced chili peppers are just some of my favorite accompaniments. Set a plate at the table and your guests can pick and choose what they like.
Great Pho-tograph of fresh vegetables and herbs
Pho-Shizzle, My Bowl-o Noozle!!
Vietnamese Pho: Beef Noodle Soup Recipe
Adapted from my favorite Vietnamese cookbook
Sometimes, I omit the 1lb of beef meat in the broth (you'll see I've made it optional) - as I've found that as long as I have good bones, the broth will have enough flavor to not need the extra beef meat.
Ingredients:
THE BROTH
2 onions, halved
4" nub of ginger, halved lengthwise
5-6 lbs of good beef bones, preferably leg and knuckle
1 lb of beef meat - chuck, brisket, rump, cut into large slices [optional]
6 quarts of water
1 package of Pho Spices [1 cinnamon stick, 1 tbl coriander seeds, 1 tbl fennel seeds, 5 whole star anise, 1 cardamom pod, 6 whole cloves - in mesh bag]
1 1/2 tablespoons kosher salt (halve if using regular table salt)
1/4 cup fish sauce
1 inch chunk of yellow rock sugar (about 1 oz) - or 1oz of regular sugarTHE BOWLS
2 lbs rice noodles (dried or fresh)
cooked beef from the broth
1/2 lb flank, london broil, sirloin or eye of round, sliced as thin as possible.
big handful of each: mint, cilantro, basil
2 limes, cut into wedges
2-3 chili peppers, sliced
2 big handfuls of bean sprouts
Hoisin sauce
Sriracha hot sauceDirections:
Char: Turn your broiler on high and move rack to the highest spot. Place ginger and onions on baking sheet. Brush just a bit of cooking oil on the cut side of each. Broil on high until ginger and onions begin to char. Turn over and continue to char. This should take a total of 10-15 minutes.
Parboil the bones: Fill large pot (12-qt capacity) with cool water. Boil water, and then add the bones, keeping the heat on high. Boil vigorously for 10 minutes. Drain, rinse the bones and rinse out the pot. Refill pot with bones and 6 qts of cool water. Bring to boil over high heat and lower to simmer. Using a ladle or a fine mesh strainer, remove any scum that rises to the top.
Boil broth: Add ginger, onion, spice packet, beef, sugar, fish sauce, salt and simmer uncovered for 1 1/2 hours. Remove the beef meat and set aside (you'll be eating this meat later in the bowls) Continue simmering for another 1 1/2 hours. Strain broth and return the broth to the pot. Taste broth and adjust seasoning - this is a crucial step. If the broth's flavor doesn't quite shine yet, add 2 teaspoons more of fish sauce, large pinch of salt and a small nugget of rock sugar (or 1 teaspoon of regular sugar). Keep doing this until the broth tastes perfect.
Prepare noodles & meat: Slice your flank/london broil/sirloin as thin as possible - try freezing for 15 minutes prior to slicing to make it easier. Remember the cooked beef meat that was part of your broth? Cut or shred the meat and set aside. Arrange all other ingredients on a platter for the table. Your guests will "assemble" their own bowls. Follow the directions on your package of noodles - there are many different sizes and widths of rice noodles, so make sure you read the directions. For some fresh rice noodles, just a quick 5 second blanch in hot water is all that's needed. The package that I purchased (above) - needed about 45 seconds in boiling water.
Ladling: Bring your broth back to a boil. Line up your soup bowls next to the stove. Fill each bowl with rice noodles, shredded cooked beef and raw meat slices. As soon as the broth comes back to a boil, ladle into each bowl. the hot broth will cook your raw beef slices. Serve immediately. Guests can garnish their own bowls as they wish.
***
Crock Pot/Slow Cooker Pho Recipe
Don’t have time to man a stove? Use your crock pot or slow cooker!
Vietnamese Chicken Pho (Pho Ga) Recipe
Vietnamese Chicken Noodle Soup (Pho Ga)
***
Pho-Lovers Pho-Ever
Viet World Kitchen
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Cheers to steamy kitchen for such an awesome recipe and entertaining tutorial. I made it for the first time last week, and friends and family are already lobbying for another batch, so here I am!
Both times, it’s been plenty flavorful. I’m not sure how previous commenters are ending up with bland broth, because the water:bone:meat ratio seems pretty dead-on to me. I think more likely, people may have failed to season properly.
I changed it up a little this time, and used 4# of laterally-cut beef leg bones and 3# of beef shanks. I highly recommend using shanks; they add a lot of flavor, and they are a very budget-friendly cut. However, their meat is not really good for serving in the broth.
I’m sure I’ll be making this again soon. Thanks again for the great recipe.
Where did you get these fabulous white bowls with the straight edge and with the matching plates to hold your delicious looking pho? Thanks for a great site!
This recipe looks pretty good, but your stock procedure has a major flaw. During the initial blanching process, you should NEVER boil the bones. You should cover them with twice their volume with water and bring only to a low low simmer. Proceeding otherwise will coagulate the albumin in the bones and prevent all of the impurities from being released. The bones should be simmered only lightly for 10 minutes while being occasionally gently moved but NOT STIRRED (this will agitate the impurities and emulsify them into the liquid). After this, shock in an ice bath and rinse. And then proceed with similar caution in the actual stock-making. This will expononentially improve the flavor and clarity of your stock
I am wondering if I need to put the spices in a spice bag? Since I am going to strain everything after the 3+ hours second simmering, won’t that clean out the spices enough? Just curious, and trying to cut out a step?
If there is a need for the bag, will someone please tell me?
Thanks, Mary
Too eliminate the fat from this soup I have a very simple method.After the broth is done and is only liquid put it in the fridge over night. In the next day you have something looking like this http://www.culinar.ro/forum/uploads/monthly_01_2009/post-41452-1232309685.jpg so you have to realize how much fat can be in these bones.The link is from a Romanian forum about the same kind of soup but a little bit different. Basically the making of the broth is similar to Vietnamese Pho soup.
If you’re going to save some for later (entire pot won’t be served the day you make it) then don’t add the fish sauce to the pot. Add it to taste in each bowl. I added mine to the pot and it tasted great that night. But the portion that sat in the fridge over night was FAR too strong to eat the days following and I had to throw it all out. When I talked to some Vietnamese friends they said that if you add the fish sauce to taste in each bowl, that will solve the problem. Happy cooking!
This is a detailed recipe. There are small mistakes: we do not use cardamom (instead we use black cardamom) nor fennel.
Regards.
We made this tonight with broth from local wild elk knee bones…WOW! And I was lazy before and didn’t char the ginger and onions but we did it this time…it made a TON of difference. Our kitchen smelled like a Vietnamese restaurant all night. Mmmmm!
you’re hilarious – and your pictures rock! this is one of the best, most thorough, succinct recipes I’ve ever come across (I read A LOT of them – also used to be a professional chef) Thank you!
Will be trying real soon!
incredible recipe and VERY simple!!!
i used my toaster over to do the charring and used some left over (frozen) beef stock since i had no beef bones. it work like a charm!!
thank you!!!!!!!!!!
Reminds me Pho from Hanoi, 1$
we can simplify the process by using New Choice Pho flavor Beef Broth made her in USA. All you need is slice eye round, noodle and vegetable and you still can have a delicious bowl pho in less than 10 minute.
Really, If you are going to pronounce something correct and tell people that this is the only way to say it, you better know where the word comes from. Pho is pronounce as “fuh” in the north of Vietnam only and Foe in the South of Vietnam. I know this because one I have been there and my wife is Vietnamese. So, please before correcting anyone on how to pronounce something remember that some say tomaytoe some say tomotoe, for the word tomato. This is one thing I can’t stand.
Really?? That’s your gripe? How incredibly lame! You should really get a life.
To jayce….if you had real pho there’s no way on earth would you eat something like you mentioned and call it pho! Disgrace.
Hey Pat George, sorry for your wife. You seem like a bit of a tosser.
To the author of this recipe, thank you, Pho (however you say it) is one of my favourites. I am eager to try this.
Using another recipe, and just found this one! I’m confused if I am supposed to throw out the chuck roast that I am cooking with the marrow. In this recipe it is listed as optional. I just need to know, since I just spent $11 on it.
george what a great whinger you are weather its spelled pho phu fue or what ever, you are going to end up a foe (do you know the mening of foe tosser?)one word of advice to you george go on ebay and buy a life.once again youre a tosser and a looser ask everyone haha.and jaden did a great job with this recipe i lovedddddd it weel done jayden.