Quick And Easy Vietnamese Pho Recipe For You To Try

In the sea of noodles, and rice dishes from South East cuisines, one recipe that stands out for its amazing taste and light texture is the Vietnamese soup, Pho. Made with fragrant beef broth, with chewy rice noodles, and topped with ingredients like bean sprouts, basil, chillies, and other vegetables, pho soup is quite easy to make, and comes together in very less time. Pronounced as ‘fuh’, this Vietnamese soup is a bowl of comfort, and is heavily dependent on the quality of the broth. The broth in pho recipes is generally beef broth that has been made with both bones and the meat, and retains the flavours and the goodness. 
Apart from the beef bones and meat that make up the major chunk of the pho soup, the recipe fir this Vietnamese soup also extensively uses aromatics like ginger and onions. In the traditional pho soup recipe, these aromatics are charred till they start oozing flavour and smell fragrant. Mix in the whole spices, and you get a broth that makes the pho soup the bowl of warmth that it is.

Ingredients for pho recipes

1. 2 sliced ginger pieces
2. 2 peeled onions
3. 5 pounds beef marrow 
4. 2 pounds beef chuck
5. 2 scallions
6. ⅓ cup fish sauce
7. 2 ounces rock sugar 
8. 5 star anise 
9. 6 cloves
10. 1 cinnamon stick 
11. 1 black cardamom pod
12. 2 teaspoons fennel seeds 
13. 2 teaspoons coriander seeds
14. 1 tablespoon salt 
15. 1 pound pho noodles
16. ⅓ pound beef sirloin

To garnish 

1. Sliced chillies 
2. Thinly sliced onions 
3. Coarsely chopped coriander
4. Moong bean sprouts 
5. Thai basil 
6. Hoisin sauce
7. Lime wedges

Steps for the pho soup recipe 

1. In a deep pan, add bones and beef chuck and cover with water. Boil for 5 minutes, and drain so that any impurities or scum is removed, and you get a much cleaner broth. 
2. Take the onions and ginger pieces, and charr them over an open flame till they’re fragrant. Once slightly cooler, peel off the blackened skins, and add them to the deep pan. In this same pan, add the rinsed bones and beef chuck and fill with water. To this pan, add the suaces, and scallions, and bring to a boil. 
3. Let this pho soup broth simmer for close to 40 minutes, till the beef chuck turns tender. Out of this pho soup broth, take out a small piece of beef and keep aside to use as garnish later. 
4. Now take the whole spices mentioned in the pho soup ingredients, like star anise, cinnamon, etc. and dry roast them over low heat till they turn fragrant. Now add them to a cheesecloth, and use a string to tightly tie it up. Add this pocket of spices to the main broth, and continue cooking on low flame. Ideally the broth used in pho recipes should be simmered for close to 4 hours. 
5. Once ready, take a bowl, and add boiled pho shoup noodles in it. Place a few slices of the beef taken out earlier, and add the pho soup broth to the bowl. Garnish this with chopped vegetables, sprouts, and lime wedges.

Things to remember while making pho recipes

1. While the pho soup recipe is inherently a non vegetarian recipe but you can always make a vegetarian pho recipe by substituting the beef with tofu, and the bone broth with vegetable broth. 
2. Traditionally the umami flavour in the pho recipes comes from the addition of fish sauce, but over the time adding salt became the norm. For an authentic taste, go for fish sauce.