i am a food blog

I Am... The ultimate guide to pho at home

October 2, 2021 • 11 comments • Posted in: noodle soup, noodles, pho, vietnamese

This is the best bowl of pho I know how to make over 20 years of making pho from scratch. You know pho needs no introduction. The deeply spiced fragrant broth is the stuff dreams are made of. The bouncy rice noodles, tender fresh beef, and bright poppy herbs and that gentle hint of lime, it's all I need in life (other than Steph).

What is pho?

Pho is a cozy, beefy, aggressively spiced soup that is also light, fresh, and bright at the same time. The simple combination of fresh rare steak, melty brisket, tender rice noodles, and that magical soup comes together to rival anything out of a Michelin starred restaurant, usually under $15 (sigh, the days of a $5 bowl are sadly long gone). If you want to know everything about pho, you can read this 3000 word ode to pho, but I think it's better just to jump right into making it.

Why this pho recipe?

This recipe includes all the little tips and tricks I’ve picked through 20 years of making pho. It includes key points such as:

• Throwing your spices in at the end to preserve their subtle flavor.
• Drying out your rice noodles so they soak up extra flavor.
• Separating out the process over two days for ultimate tastiness and relaxation.

I hope it'll be the best pho you've ever made.

The two day version

When you want to go all out, optionally separating your pho making over two days gives the best results. On day 1, you make the pho and strain it into a container, then refrigerate the soup and the brisket separately. On the morning of the next day, the fat will have solidified on the top of the soup. Remove the fat and melt it down over low heat in a small pot, then strain it into a small container and refrigerate. Rinse/slice the toppings, wrap them up, and throw them in the fridge too. Finally, half an hour to an hour before you want to eat, reheat the pho soup and season it to taste. Make the noodles and let them hang out in a colander to dry out a bit. Neatly slice your cold brisket and drop the slices in the soup to reheat. Thinly slice your steak if you didn’t buy it presliced. Then just build your bowls, adding the fat back in if desired, and go to town.

Oxtail makes the best pho soup

Over the years I’ve tried everything that can make a good soup, and when I want to go all out, I splurge on oxtail. It has the perfect combination of collagen for body, fat for taste, and of course, beefiness for beefiness. It’s a little on the expensive side but totally, 100% worth it. I long for the days when oxtail was cheap and unknown. When we live in the desert and it’s hard to get oxtail, marrow/soup bones are great. But oxtail is by far the best option for the best pho soup. Note: After you are done with the oxtail, the meat is a little tasteless but very tender and falls right off the bone - remove and enjoy it with some soy sauce or fish sauce as a chef’s treat, or serve it, it's up to you!

How to make pho soup

1. Blanch the oxtails. Rapidly boil the bones for 5 minutes to clear out any impurities that might be there. Tip: I like to use a small pot to blanch the meat faster while heating up my 8 cups of water in a larger pot simultaneously. That way, I can just use tongs to transfer the bones from the small pot to the big pot without a lot of effort, and it saves time because you’re heating up both pots at the same time, and also because then you don’t need to wash a giant pot; the little one just goes in the dishwasher.
2. Char the onions and ginger. I use a blowtorch exclusively for this. You can char them in a pan on the stove or under the oven broiler, but a good blowtorch is a super essential kitchen tool that’s not very expensive, and bonus, you can make creme brulee.
3. Simmer the oxtails, onions, and ginger as low as possible for 3.5 hours. I’ve tried this at 3 hours and 4 hours, and 3.5 hours is the right amount of time. You’re looking for something super low, like 1 bubble every 30 seconds low. Preferably put a slightly ajar lid on it. Check back at the 1.5 hour mark to make sure you have at least enough water to cover the bones.
4. Char the other spices. This is an optional step that I always do. You don’t need a lot of time, just a brief kiss with the blowtorch. If you don’t have a blowtorch, toast the spices over low heat until they become fragrant.
5. Drop the brisket and spices in at the 3.5 hour mark and continue simmering for another 2 hours.
6. And you’re done. You’ll need to season it with fish sauce, salt, and sugar, but I save that for the second day.

Stovetop vs Crockpot vs Instant Pot

• Can you make this with a crockpot? Yes! You can do everything in a crockpot if you skip the blanching step since you’re straining it at the end anyway. Skip the blanching step and do everything else in a crockpot on high/low (as appropriate) and you’ll have the best crockpot pho ever.
• What about the instant pot? Also yes! The instant pot is one of my preferred ways to make pho when I want something simple, although, full disclosure: it’s not as good as the stovetop/crockpot version. Since the instant pot is about speed, you can just drop everything on high pressure for 40 minutes, and you’ll have some amazing (and amazingly fast) pho.

Ingredients for pho

While pho is easy to make, technique-wise, it can be a little daunting to gather all the ingredients. If it’s your first time, the spices can even seem a little much, but the spices are good for many, many bowls of pho, as well as many other awesome dishes.

Oxtail

This is the key to the most amazing pho. It used to be super cheap back in the day. As it became more popular in recent years, it’s also gotten more expensive, but it’s 100% worth it. After you’re done making the pho soup, the meat falls right off the bone. I don’t usually include it in the pho because it’s not as aesthetically clean as all the sliced meats, but if you wanted to, you totally could. Have it with a little Thai chili crushed into some soy sauce as a reward for all that work you did.

Brisket

If you want your brisket to be 100% fall apart in your mouth, cook it for 4 or even the whole 5.5 hours. Personally, i like mine to have a little body (the rare steak provides the softness anyway) so I only cook it for 2 hours, which both gives it structure and leaves most of the taste where it belongs, in the brisket. You probably don’t need a large brisket - the recipe calls for just 1/4lb per person - so if a large brisket is all you can find, switch it out for an equally as traditional flank steak.

Sirloin

This is the traditional rare steak that is the basis of pho tai, the default (and amazing) pho bowl you get everywhere. It’s a tender fall-apart melt-in-your-month affair that’s raw when it comes to you on the table, both to show off the quality of the meat and to let you finish the cooking so that its as perfect as possible. Tip: If the thought of serving raw steak to your diners (or yourself) turns you off, cook it in the soup on the stove for 5 seconds or so, then serve it on a separate dish so it doesn’t overcook in the hot pho soup. Ask your butcher to slice this, or buy hot-pot ready meats.

Spices & Aromatics

In order of importance, my pho spice mix is: star anise, cinnamon, cloves, coriander seeds, white (or black) peppercorns, cardamom, fennel, and cumin. You’ll also need onion and ginger.

Toppings

Toppings take a great noodle soup to the next level. For pho, we use lime wedges for brightness, fresh or blanched bean sprouts fior earthiness, fresh cilantro, sliced onions, fresh Thai basil, and jalapenos or thai chilis if you like spice.

Pho noodles: dried or fresh?

Pho isn’t pho without rice noodles. As with almost all noodles, fresh pho noodles are best, but the dried stuff works too. Sometimes the noodles will be called rice stick or Thai rice stick noodles. For me, medium thickness is best. Unlike with ramen or other noodle-intensive dishes, the rice noodles are super forgiving. In fact, it’s better if you make them in advance. Briefly blanch the noodles about halfway to your desired softness, then drain and rinse them in cold water and let them dry out while you do other things. Letting the noodles sit and dry out seems counterintuitive since you just cooked them, but it’s the secret to flavorful noodles as they absorb the pho soup as they rehydrate.

Assembling your pho

If you’ve never served multiple bowls of noodle soup simultaneously before, it can be a little complicated. Here's how to do it with the least amount of stress or fuss possible. You need large deep bowls that can fit 3 cups of liquid in them.

1. Heat your bowls by filling them with hot tap water for at least 2-3 minutes, then drain. Heating up your bowls ensures that the soup absorbs the heat of the bowl, instead of the other way around.
2. Boil a pot of water for the noodles. In another pot over very low heat, warm up your pho soup .
3. Cook your noodles half of the time indicated, then rinse them in cold water and drain. Divide evenly into each bowl.
4. Prep the toppings: rinse and dry the bean sprouts, thai basil, and cilantro. Slice the onions and limes and plate everything. Put the bottles of sriracha and hoisin sauce on table.
5. Slice your meats. The brisket should be 1/8” thick or so. Throw it in with the pho soup once it’s been sliced to warm it up. Slice the steak if you didn’t get that done for you at the shop, then divide both the steak and brisket evenly between each bowl.
6. Once everyone is ready to eat, ladle the now piping hot soup over the raw beef in each bowl, then deliver to the tables.
7. Eat as soon as possible, as loudly as possible, with as many toppings as possible.

Read More →