Phở recipe

Pho is a light and flavourful soup made using rice noodles, sliced raw beef, various herbs and vegetables, all covered in boiling beef broth. I've never eaten traditional pho, only a Canadian version in restaurants, but it's probably my favourite food. This recipe can use store-bought soup stock, but I like to make my own.

Beef stock

Get some beef bones, preferably not frozen for too long - I've had my greatest success with a combination of marrow bone and oxtail, but the latter has become much more expensive.

To get rid of scum and impurities, rinse them for a little bit, then leave them in a cold pot of water for an hour and rinse some more, then broil at a high temperature in the oven for 10-20 minutes - this is to render out fat, which you can collect and use later. Getting rid of scum and fat isn't necessary, and you might enjoy some amount of it, but the less of this you do, the more metallic and oily the final broth will be.

Place them in a large stock pot, along with some cheap beef if you want some nice boiled meat (consider adding this to the oven above.) Cover with water and set to boil, and consider adding a small amount of vinegar (apple cider works well) to bring out more collagen from the bones.

When the water starts to boil, the frothy scum from the blood and such in the bones will start to collect at the top (this will happen less the more you prepare the bones ahead of time.) Use a ladle (or, if you have one, a strainer with a handle) to take it out. The soup will probably also still get some amount of oil and fat - this is kind of impossible to take out unless you finish making it and wait for it to cool down and then spoon it out once it's settled at the top. So, your first bowl will be oilier than your second.

I have experienced more success when adding aromatics half an hour to an hour after adding the bones. Aromatics differ between regions but you generally definitely want a good amount of lemongrass, but also optionally:

• Yellow onion
• Green onion
• Cinnamon or Cassia bark
• Star anise
• Cardamom
• Fennel seeds
• Ginger
• probably some more

Also add a whole bunch of fish sauce. Lots of it!

Leave it to boil at some temperature for a couple hours. You can also make it by doing all of those steps in a pressure cooker, in which case it takes like an hour at the most, but if you do that, make sure to boil your bones to get the scum out beforehand. If you don't remove the scum your soup will taste kinda weird and metallic. Cause of the blood.

Your soup also needs a lot of salt. More than that. More than that. You're salting a 3D object. More than that.

Pho

If you aren't making your own stock, start boiling the store-bought stuff.

You want all your ingredients to be sliced really thin, because the goal is to get the boiling soup to cook everything in the bowl they're served in.

Start boiling some rice noodles. Generally, thin noodles are used, about one size above the smallest size, but you can do it with thicker noodles. For some reason I always have a lot of trouble properly boiling rice noodles, even when I soak them like the packaging says they always either take way too much time to cook or stick together weirdly. So follow package directions and do your best. Ideally, the rice noodles will be hot when the soup is added. EDIT: I've found great success replacing rice noodles with glass noodles (made from extracting the starch from sweet potatoes), which I find tasty but isn't traditional.

If you want some tripe, add it to the soup to boil, or boil it in a separate container, as well as any precooked stuff like tendon meatballs.

Get some thin-sliced beef. You can try to slice it yourself, but since the beef should be fully cooked by the soup, your knife and cutting skills aren't good enough. Just get some pre-sliced stuff from the store and defrost it.

Prepare your vegetables. Generally, this will include:

• Thinly-sliced onion (I've seen both red and yellow)
• Chopped cilantro/coriander
• Red Thai chilies/serrano peppers
• Lime wedges
• Beansprouts
• Basil

It can also include spearmint, culantro leaves, other spicy peppers (like jalapeno), rice paddy herbs, and a bunch of other stuff.

If using homemade stock, grab the bones and try to extract some of the cartilage, marrow, and bits of beef. In addition, if you put in some regular beef, take that out and slice it up. These extra sources of varied meat are the best reason to make the stock yourself. a good reason to make the stock yourself, but at this point I think I'm good enough at making the stock that it's just better than anything I can buy or order. Which is awesome!

In a large bowl, place your noodles at the bottom, your different kinds of meat and cartilage on top, and then all the different herbs and veggies you have. Finally, ladle the boiling broth on top of everything, making sure to hit all your ingredients. Your onions and raw beef especially need to be cooked through to be properly enjoyed. Ideally, your soup cooks everything, but if your ingredients are a little too thick or cold, it might not fully work. If this happens, you can try boiling some of the ingredients in the soup before adding the soup in, or even just microwaving your finished bowl.

Squeeze in your lime, mix the ingredients around, and start eating! Sometimes, you might want to add some extra flavourings: soy sauce, siracha, hoisin sauce, sugar, more fish sauce, and/or more salt. But you don't have to.