Got a pho recipe?

Does anyone have any tips or recipes for making pho? I know it's a lot easier to get your slurp on at Tank and call it a day, but I want to see if I can make a reasonable facsimile at home--even if it takes 10 hours and lots of prep.

I read somewhere (maybe TOC?) that Tank's broth has "scorched" ginger, among other things. Any little tips or suggestions (or shortcuts) for making the broth would be most appreciated.

funny you asked...because I made pho for dinner on sunday. Let me just preface this by saying I didn't make it "authentically" by having things boil for hours on end. If you're looking for a quickie and yet conforting bowl of pho, here's my recipe.

- 1 package of bahn pho noodles (we like the thinner noodles)
- 1 jar of beef pho paste
- beef buillion cubes
- meats of your choice (we like beef & tendon meatballs, thinly sliced beef)
- bean sprouts
- cilantro
- lime
- sliced green onions
- asian basil
- baby bok choy, thinly sliced on a bias

1) In a stock pot, heat up 3-6 cups of water or more if you'd like.
2) For every 3 cups, add 1 tablespoons of pho paste (as noted in directions for the amount of water.)
3) Add the same number of buillion cubes as you did tablespoons of paste
3) Add your meats/meatballs...for paper thin cuts, add to soup when serving
4) Boil away for about 20 minutes
5) Soak your noodles in hot water until softened and drain

To Serve,
- Place softened noodles in individual serving bowls
- Pour hot broth with meats over noodles
- Top with uncooked thinly sliced meats
- Serve with bean sprouts, cilantro, basil, lime slices, bok choy, green onions


It's super easy and close enough (for us) to the pho we order on Argyle.

Is there a brand of beef pho paste that you recommend? What's in it? Does it have ginger and star anise and those other spices that make the broth so...yum? And what do I look for/how do I ask for it in a store?

This is definitely a great shortcut (didn't realize there's a ready-made paste!), but I also want to find out what else goes into an authentic broth (and how it's prepped) to see if I can make it. I like a challenge.

I have a recipe from a Vietnamese friend of mine. It's one that he found online and modified a little bit that he claims is very close to his moms. He's tried and tried to get the recipe out of his mom and either she's not sharing, or it's just too hard for her to really explain how she makes hers.He did tell me that all told it takes his mom around 8ish hours to get hers done to her liking. I'm not sure the rules on reposting recipes so I hope this is acceptable.

* 5 pounds beef knuckle, with meat
* 2 pounds beef oxtail
* 1 daikon radish, sliced
* 2 onions, chopped
* 2 ounces whole star anise pods
* 1/2 cinnamon stick
* 2 whole cloves
* 1 teaspoon black peppercorns
* 1 slice fresh ginger root
* 1 tablespoon white sugar
* 1 tablespoon salt
* 1 tablespoon fish sauce
*
* 1 1/2 pounds dried flat rice noodles
* 1/2 pound frozen beef sirloin


DIRECTIONS:

1. Place the beef knuckle in a very large (9 quart or more) pot. Season with salt, and fill pot with 2 gallons of water. Bring to a boil, and cook for about 2 hours.
2. Skim fat from the surface of the soup, and add the oxtail, radish and onions. Tie the anise pods, cinnamon stick, cloves, peppercorns and ginger in a cheesecloth or place in a spice bag; add to the soup. Stir in sugar, salt and fish sauce. Simmer over medium-low heat for at least 4 more hours (the longer, the better). At the end of cooking, taste, and add salt as needed. Strain broth, and return to the pot to keep at a simmer. Discard spices and bones. Reserve meat from the beef knuckle for other uses if desired.
3. Bring a large pot of lightly salted water to a boil. Soak the rice noodles in water for about 20 minutes, then cook in boiling water until soft, but not mushy, about 5 minutes. Slice the frozen beef paper thin. The meat must be thin enough to cook instantly.
4. Place some noodles into each bowl, and top with a few raw beef slices. Ladle boiling broth over the beef and noodles in the bowl. Serve with hoisin sauce and sriracha sauce on the side. Set onion, cilantro, bean sprouts, basil, green onions, and lime out at the table for individuals to add toppings to their liking.

crrush wrote:Is there a brand of beef pho paste that you recommend? What's in it? Does it have ginger and star anise and those other spices that make the broth so...yum? And what do I look for/how do I ask for it in a store?

Here's what the label says:
PHO - Vietnamese Beef Flavour Paste
"Por Kwan" brand (noted on the left side of the label)

Ingredients:
onion, soya bean oil, salt, garlic, water, sugar, beef flavor, ginger, cinnamon, sweet basil leaves, star anise, msg, citric acid

Product of Thailand
8 oz jar

I purchased this at the asian market located in the shopping plaza on Broadway, where there is a Blockbuster, laundrymat, dollar store and medical office. The store is snug in the corner of the plaza.

It was in the aisle where there are powdered soup mixes, rice vinegar on the bottom shelf and other thailand sauce products....very close to the check out. I want to say the pho paste costs less than $2 and the noodles were $.79. (However, I recommend a large package of noodles which has small pre-portioned noodle bundles...and that's like $2.45 for a big ol' sack. (We like pho and noodles.) The jar of paste will make a whole lot of pho.


Hope this helps.

That would be the much-loved Broadway Supermarket, next to Dong Ky and sharing a lot with Silver Seafood.

Dong Ky
4877 N. Broadway
773.989.5579

Ahh, the "Broadway Supermarket." I always wondered what to call this place. Everytime I'm there I'm overwhelmed by the number of frozen fish and chinese sausages. I'd be interested in knowing what others have purchased and prepared. I was at the market last week and got endless enjoyment torturing a giant box of live crabs.

I'm very interested in how this pho paste tastes. I get pho cravings and its kinda tough to just rush out to Argyle. Until a couple of weeks ago, I could get passable pho at a little shop at Higgins east of Cumberland, alas never posted. One night recently it transformed into very mediocre (one try) Thai.

-ramon

For starters, BS is a hell of a source for bright-eyed, real, red snapper at a fraction of what you'd pay for the same quality elsewhere.

Ramon wrote: I'd be interested in knowing what others have purchased and prepared. -ramon

Thanks for stating the name of the store! (Duh - I guess I could've looked at my shopping receipts, huh.)

I shop at this store almost every week, if not every two weeks. I suppose I could go to other stores on Argyle street, however a major reason why I prefer Broadway Supermarket over the others is the parking lot. There's a couple stores south of Argyle tucked away in another plaza on the east side of Broadway with a parking lot, but it's hectic getting in and out of the parking lot.

Anyways, the asian staples I purchase there include:
- pho paste
- pad thai sauce
- rice/egg noodles (various ones for pho, pad thai, pancit, etc.)
- soy sauce (Silver Swan brand)
- oyster sauce
- nori sheets
- botan calrose rice
- seasoned rice vinegar
- cilantro/asian basil/green onions/bean sprouts
- wonton wrappers
- tofu
(list goes on and on)

Being asian myself, I prepare a lot of meals with noodles and rice like pad thai, various stir frys, maki rolls, etc.

I do have one tip though... I recommend buying frozen gyoza and shumai elsewhere. The Broadway Market and Viet Hoa (a store on Argyle) sell these items at higher prices. Oddly, I purchase shumai, gyoza and edamame at Trader Joes. They are about the same in price, however Trader Joes offer more for your money and they don't taste bad at all.[/list]

Phô is one of a generous universe's gifts to human kind.
That having been said, there are some ways to short cut, and some ways NOT to short cut the making of it. I've been messing around for nearly 4 yrs on this project, and am finally starting to make some progress.

First, I found a product I like better than the bottled paste. It's an envelope, a pink envelope, containing granulated instant phô. Name: Gai vi pho bo.

Secondly, Better-than-Bouillon Beef is an important upgrade from beef bouillon. That move really helped my quality.

Thirdly, there simply is no getting around a couple hours of simmer. So here's what I do. I get some soup beef, a tranche of something with meat, some bone, and some fat. Brown it, and gently simmer for a couple of hours. Throw it away, chill the broth and later skim c. 85-90% of the fat off; but not *all*, there's spozed to be a bit of a shimmer on the surface.

Frequently I put in the bouillon while I simmer, small Tbs or really-large tsp per final-desired cup of broth.

Simmer some tripe, really finely cut, in the broth afterward, just enough to soften it up.

The meatballs are important--but I think you can buy them. I've made them and that's good, but not quite on.

You need some good fatty meat, and some great steak, both sliced thin, but the fatty stuff should be only about 1/2" wide, while the good stuff can be up to, say, 2". About 15 minutes before you want to eat, pitch the phô seasoning according to directions on the packet.

Follow the other folks' recommendations for the noodles and final stages--they're right on.

Oh, in addition to the 'salad' they recommend, I add mint. It goes simply wonderfully with the basil and cilantro. A phô place out in Sonoma did this to me the first time, and it's a nice addition. I've had it several other places, too, so it's not uncommon.

Enjoy, enjoy enjoy!

Geo
PS. Here's a really nice discussion, plus recipe:

http://vietworldkitchen.com/bookshelf/a ... htm#recipe

Righteous! I may be getting back to you with followup questions, but this is really helpful.

Have you ever tried your own spice mix (instead of the pink package, which I'm assuming contains the spices)?

Greets crrush--

My housie in KC has done it from scratch, and the results are pretty impressive, but not that much better than mine to justify the work. At least that's what he concluded. Two things we've discovered, tho'.

First, you don't want to seriously boil the pink pkg contents during their 15 minutes of stardom: the aromas blow off really fast. So you want nothing more than a very gentle simmer while you finish off.

Secondly, it doesn't hurt at all to put a pinch of a *really* good cinnamon--we used Penzey's Saigon version--and a point from a star-anise into the last simmer. You *can* overdo this, tho', so we recommend either don't do it, or do it only very carefully.

I'd suspect you can find the pink pkg widely available--I first found it in the Asian grocery in Janesville, highly recommended to me by the Viet owner. And it's in the stores here in Montreal, too; which leads me to think that it's pretty common.

Keep us posted on your results!

Geo

BTW, Cook's Illustrated has a nice article plus recipe on their website; it's article #383 ("Vietnamese-style soups").

Geo

Stopped by the Broadway Market around noon today. Was over-whelmed as usual. I found some pho noodles after walking down the noodle aisle several baker dozen times.

The pho base took me a bit longer. I didn't know if I was going to buy the afore-mentioned paste or "pink packet." Long past the time that store security should have been informed that a slobbering idiot needs be tossed out of aisle 3, I found both a jar of paste and a box labeled similarly to the packets description. I chose the box with little reason. (Wrong choice, will explain later.)

Due to prior recon, I knew exactly where the beef meatballs where, and only dickered for a few minutes over which of the half-dozen available to buy.



Aside from the obvious, I'm still not sure where I'm going with this.


Ps: The only live seafood available today was lobster and dungeness crab.

-ramon

Folks, I screwed up: there's a *brand* name on the pink pkg, that I didn't notice bcz I was looking at an opened pack, which obscured the name: "Golden Boy", written in (yup!) golden-colored script, top-right hand corner.

Sorry, I should have been more thorough...

Geo